


Mayday

by CannibaLilly



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Explicit Language, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Guns, Mental Instability, Suicide, Temporary Character Death - Jack Harkness, The Time Lord Victorious, Violence, dark!Doctor, kinda one-sided Shaun/Donna, one-sided jack/doctor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-28 11:11:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10097180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CannibaLilly/pseuds/CannibaLilly
Summary: Set directly after The Waters of Mars. During the Meta-Crisis not only Donna’s mind has been damaged. The Doctor slowly loses his fight against the Time Lord Victorious and proceeds to "fix" the fix points in time. when even Torchwood find themselves unable to cope with this new threat, Jack’s only option is to call on the last sane part of the Doctor’s mind, which is safely locked away in a soon-to-be bride in Chiswick. With a very reluctant Master and the still memory-wiped Donna, he needs to stop the Doctor before it's too late.Meanwhile, Donna just wants to live her life and get married, but when adventure in the form of Captain Jack knocks on her door, she has to make the decision if she wants to find out what happened in the years that she forgot, even if it means risking her marriage and quite possibly her own life.A journey through time and space follows and Donna is more alone than ever in this vast and empty universe. Now the Doctor is not her best friend but maybe the worst enemy she ever had to face. She has to make up her mind about where her loyalty lies with the Doctor, the universe, or herself, as saving the fix points means making the right decisions even if they seem to be the wrong ones.





	1. Three Old Friends

**Author's Note:**

> This story has been sitting on my desk since late 2015 and I finally want to finish and start posting it.
> 
> Let me know what you think. Comments are a great way to show me what you liked and an even better way to vent in case you disliked something ;)
> 
> Inspired by the song "My Demonds" by Starset.

It was cold on earth, especially in winter nights. Even colder than it is in the TARDIS. Much colder than in a spacesuit on a blowing-up Mars colony, but the Doctor was not cold and he did not move, he just watched Adelaide Brooke walk the short distance left to her front door. A plan, red, wooden door with snow-covered steps leading up to it. How out of place Adelaide looked in her brown jump suit and black boots, a gun still strapped to her belt. A woman torn right out of a deathly catastrophe and brought back into the safety of her home, all thanks to the last of the Time Lords. The winner who had done it again. Saved another human life, but, unlike the others, this one actually really mattered.  
  
Adelaide stopped, one hand on the door handle and turned around. She and the Doctor exchanged a look. There was no gratitude on her face. The Doctor turned away, ignoring the familiar pounding in his head that had grown worse over the last days, but seemed to be ebbing away, finally, as he walked back to his TARDIS. What could he do next? With the overdue realisation that time is his to command after all, the better question would be, what _couldn’t_ he do next?  
  
His thoughts were interrupted by a shot cutting through the nightly air. As he turned on his heels, he could just catch a glimpse of the blue light fading behind Adelaide’s window. It didn’t take a Time Lord’s hearing to know inside of this house, behind the plain, red door, the body of Adelaide Brooke had just thudded to the ground. Would she still be in the hallway or had she walked into the living room? Was she lying next to a big Christmas tree with neatly wrapped boxed right now?  
  
The Doctor watched the house for a long moment as the snow fell around him. He knew, with the certainty of someone who had mastered the time vortex that this woulnd’t change a thing about Adelaide’s granddaughter’s future. The only thing that this would change was Adelaide’s Wikipedia page that now said “dies on earth”.  
  
The Doctor curled his cold lips into a smile. Humans could be incredibly funny sometimes. Had she believed that would change anything? Maybe even stop the Doctor? The Time Lord Victorious? Yes, that was exactly what she would have liked to believe.  
  
The Time Lord Victorious turned back to the TARDIS. It was a bit sad though. He’d put so much effort into saving Adelaide’s life and for what? Some more minutes for her to draw breath. An awful waste of his time, if he thought about it, but fortunately, time was something he had more than enough of.

 

x-x-x-x-x

 

Donna Noble woke up, but wasn’t quite sure why. She felt tired and her body shivered at the idea of getting out from under her duvet, so she snuggled back into her pillow and tried to go back to sleep and dream some more. It had been a good dream. She’d been walking though an infinite, snowy landscape, finding slaves that were held captive in a warehouse and saving them. Shaun often said Donna had a great imagination and urged her to write some of the stuff down, maybe hoping they could live on the royalty. Donna would admit that some money would be nice, now that she and Shaun wanted to get married and move in together, but she couldn’t, for the life of her, turn her dreams into proper stories. The main reason for that was that she couldn’t find a main character she liked.  
  
Her dreams provided her with enough villains and victims and side-characters, but there were no heroes. No protagonist she could hope a reader to root for. She hadn’t told Shaun about it, because it would sound narcissistic to tell him she dreamed about herself. Not from her own perspective, but from the perspective of an outsider watching her from... well, the outside. Donna had never figured out why, but it was the same for all of her dreams. She watched herself through the eyes of a stranger as she was trying to save Pompeii, meeting famous authors and discovering strange worlds. There was just no way she could write a book with herself as the hero, the mere idea made her roll her eyes.  
  
There was nothing remotely read-worthy about Donna Noble. She was a middle aged temp from Chiswick, soon going to be married to Shaun Temple. Even the accident some month ago through which she had lost years of her memory was pretty boring. Car crash, no long-term consequences, yawn.  
  
“Donna? Are you up yet?!” If that wasn’t the lovely voice of her mother Sylvia calling upstairs.  
  
“It’s Saturday! I’m allowed to sleep in!” Donna shouted back without opening her eyes.  
  
“It’s Sunday and we’re late!”  
  
_No, I never land on Sundays. Sundays are boring_ , Donna though with a lopsided grin. Where was this quote from again? For a moment she’d thought it was from... Who? None of her friends “landed” anywhere. Must be from a book or TV show or so.  
  
With a reluctant moan, Donna pushed her duvet back and swung her legs out of bed. It was a chilly autumn morning and outside of her window Chiswick’s population was hurrying to or back from church or their relatives’ houses, thickly wrapped up in layers of scarves, gloves, mittens and coats. An image from Donna’s dream appeared in front of her mind’s eye. She, wearing the fluffiest, black coat against a chilly breeze, grinning a daft grin. A feeling of deep affection exploded in Donna and she pushed the image away. She really was hopelessly narcissistic... At least sometimes. Was there something like an ego-bipolar?  
  
Because most of the time, Donna didn’t like herself that much. She looked plain, sounded plain, thought plain things, but sometimes... rarely, but sometimes, she stopped to give her reflection a second look, or her words a second thought and suddenly she felt - she had no other words for it - amazed. Amazed at how beautiful and clever and brilliant she was. Usually those rare sparks of positivity were followed by a painful pounding in her head. Maybe she had a really weird brain tumour... Or was this what schizophrenia or a split personality felt like? According to Donna’s doctors, it was none of that and so Donna just had to live with her weird self.  
  
With the well-known feeling of her skull being just a bit too small for her brain, Donna exchanged her pyjamas for a coarsely knit white jumper and some comfortable jeans before she headed downstairs.

 

x-x-x-x-x

 

“No no no!” Jack hollered and threw the remote control at his telly before he slumped down in the chair in his office in the Torchwood headquarter in Cardiff. He shouldn’t have lost his cool, because now he had to watch the news without being able to switch them off. He closed his eyes and covered his ears but it was still seeping through to him.  
  
The Titanic, the longest living cruiser ever! Book a ticket now!  
  
Jack the Ripper? Learn everything about this barely known killer who murdered a prostitute in London centuries ago, before the police caught him.  
  
Visit Van Gogh’s New Exhibition next spring and see all the pictures, including those of his family and a self portrait of him at the age of 93!!  
  
And it went on and on like this. No-one seemed to think it off, except for Jack who knew what things were supposed to be like. One of the perks of being a time traveller. Good news over good news, except when the bad news hit the media... Europe making use of the death penalty on a daily basis. The strict persecution of homosexuals. Medical treatment with bloodletting and lobotomies. Elvis Who? What’s Hogwarts? And what is the Macarena??  
  
At first Jack had believed these little and big dents in time where an indication for the Doctor’s death. Jack had been ready to accept the worst case scenario of the Doctor having died and some monster twisting earth’s time line. He had believed it for weeks, until he’d finally figured out he couldn’t find proofs for the Doctor’s absence in the bad news, but he could see his presence in the good news.  
  
And then it had dawned on Jack that it was the Doctor doing ‘good’ things that caused the bad. He was changing fixed points and Jack had no idea why. Hadn’t that always been the Doctor’s first rule? Leave the fix points alone.  
  
Jack had tried to contact the Doctor with all he had, certain that the Time Lord was not aware of the damage he caused. He had hoped. He had trusted. He had been naive and that was why it had taken him far too long to believe the other side of the stories.  
  
Among thousands and thousands of posts on the world wide web celebrating and applauding a stranger in a long brown coat who had helped them and their ancestors there were a few others. Some people painted a more sinister picture of the hero in his blue box.  
  
Cold.  
  
Ruthless.  
  
Cruel.  
  
Menacing.  
  
They told stories of how this man had sacrificed and threatened, betrayed and murdered for the ‘greater good’. Bullshit! Jack had dismissed with an angry click or two. Until he had tried talking to Martha.  
  
Martha Jones had never joined UNIT or Torchwood though. The only trace of her was a well-kept gravestone on the local cemetery. According to this stone, Martha had died on the day the Judoon had hijacked the hospital she had been working in. She and every other human being who had been in that building that day.  
  
And that was when Jack had started reading the other stories more carefully. Because the Doctor he knew would have never ever let Martha Jones die. The character these other people were describing however seemed more than capable of doing something like that.  
  
So Jack had had no choice but to gather his team and warn them about this alien that was currently tempering with earth’s history and future. They were a reliable group of people, loyal, but Jack still withheld details from them. Most of them concerning how to kill this alien that called itself the Doctor. If they came across him, Jack couldn’t stress that enough, was not to fight. Stay calm, reason, beg for mercy if you must, because the Doctor he knew was no merciless man. But then again... the man Jack knew would never have let Martha Jones die.  
  
Jack let his eyes wander over the ceiling of his office that was flickering in the blue light of the television screen, at a loss as to what to do now. With Martha dead and the Doctor his usual, impossible-to-contact self... what could he do? Jack was sure he would have come up with a really clever plan, if not the explosion in the Torchwood headquarter had gone off just at this moment and slammed the door of Jack’s office into his side, knocking him against the concrete wall together with his desk, the chair and the television which finally stopped broadcasting.


	2. The Call to Adventure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor has found Jack and Jack finds Donna. Explosions and confusion ensue.

Jack came to, with half of the ceiling lying on top of him. At least that was what Jack felt like. Bless the immortality with which he was cursed. Slowly he sat up and pushed the rubble off of his chest and legs. He coughed, the dust burned in his eyes and lungs, but at least his resurrected body had healed every broken bone and burst blood vessel.

 

Only a nervously flickering light bulb that was dangling from the ceiling was left of Jack’s lamp. Its light cast shadows around the destroyed office, one of them catching the sharp outline of a face. Jack didn’t jump, he only lowered his head slightly to regard the man who was sitting on the broken remains of his desk, his legs dangling in the air. Jack couldn’t suppress the rush of affection he felt for the Doctor, even now, but he could very well ignore it.

 

“What an entry,” he said eventually. Somewhere in the distance he could hear water splashing against concrete. A pipe must have broken during the explosion.

 

If Jack had hoped the Doctor would deny being to blame for the accident, he got disappointed. The Doctor shrugged his usual, mock-modest shrug. “You’d be surprised what you can do with some hydrogen. Well, no, you probably wouldn’t.”

 

“You could have phoned, you know? Or rang the door bell. Only if you haven’t wiped those inventions from history too, of course.”

 

The Doctor tilted his head, making the shadows on the walls move around him like his personal bodyguards. “My aim was never to stop any inventions from happening. All these… unforeseen changes in Earth’s history, they are teething troubles. No Time Lord has ever worked with fix points like I am. Problems were to be expected. You should think they are irrelevant, compared to all the good I’ve done already.”

 

“Already? You want to keep messing with history?! Doctor, people are dying because of the ‘good’ you’ve done!” Jack only realised that he had raised his voice when he stopped talking. He couldn’t take the calmness with which the Doctor talked about all the horrible things he’d caused. The suffering and the illnesses he decided to dismiss as ‘teething troubles’.

 

“People die,” the Doctor said, if anything even calmer than before. “They always do. I stay away and they die. I try to help and they die. They die. They die. They die. Not anymore. The rules have changed. _I_ have changed the rules, after I’ve gotten rid of everyone else who could have stopped me.”

 

“Like you’ve gotten rid of Martha you mean?!”

 

The Doctor laughed. It wasn’t a fully blown, villain has-caught-the-hero laugh, he just gave a little chuckle as if Jack has made a very obvious but understandable mistake. In the time when Jack had been travelling with the Doctor and Rose he had heard that chuckle quite a lot and it had always made his chest feel all warm. Now the Doctor laughed and Jack wanted to punch him in the face.

 

“Martha Jones? Oh, no. No, this hospital was just another unfortunate side-effect of another fix point I corrected. I am talking about the people who could have actually gotten in the way of what I’m doing. Time Lords and Daleks. But I killed them all.”

 

“Y-you had to. There was a war, you... you had no choice,” Jack said, considering his words carefully. In front of him stood a stranger. He wore the face of the Doctor, used his voice and habits and words, but he was different. And Jack realised he was facing the creature those people on the internet had described to him. _Cruel. Menacing. Cold. Ruthless._

 

“A war, yes,” the Doctor agreed slowly. “Between the two most powerful species in the universe and everyone died. Everyone but me. I’m the winner. The Time Lord Victorious.”

 

Jack swallowed to test if he still could. He had been in lots of fights, some qualifying as wars, but never had anyone ever talked about surviving as ‘winning’. There was life and death. Nothing else. Certainly no ‘winners’. And Jack couldn’t see how the Doctor could think about it like that.

“Doctor,” he said and the Time Lord’s eyes found him, focusing as if he had pulled the Doctor out of a long lost memory. “What happened? Did you have... an accident? Did someone or something attack you?”

 

The Doctor’s lips curled back in a smile. “Why? Because you think it’d need a monster or a drug to make me rearrange the game?”

 

“No... because I believe it’d need a monster or drug to make you talk about all this as a ‘game’.”

 

The Doctor stood up in a smooth motion and Jack hid his impulse to back off behind nonchalantly crossing arms. The Doctor had the talent, even in this rather skinny body, to appear like the most dangerous man in the room. Now that Jack thought about it, maybe he had always been.

 

“Oh, I think we should be talking about it as a game,” the Doctor said and put the kind of angry edge into his voice which he usually saved for Daleks and the like. “Because if we talked about something more serious, I might end up with the impression that you and your friends wanted to stop me. And that could make me very angry. While in a game, you merely tried to win and I can accept that.”

 

“So you’re not angry? What do you call planting a bomb on my door step then?!” Jack barked, gesturing at the hole that had been his door. The Torchwood headquarter was destroyed, years upon years of research were lost and his team was either dead or severely injured.

 

The Doctor looked at the mess as if he hadn’t noticed it until then. A moment later he looked at Jack and answered, “a necessary move. I can’t have you winning, can I?” Jack opened his mouth to shout a reply, but the Doctor merely raised his hand to shush him and continued, “I know this is difficult for you to understand. That’s why I tried to keep you out of the way, but when I realised what you were planning... I hope you understand it now. Stay out of my way. I know what I’m doing.”

 

“You’re destroying the planet! You’re twisting it into something it shouldn’t be! Mutating humankind!”

 

“I’m improving it!” the Doctor shouted, and this time, this once, Jack actually backed off. He realised he was till half lying on the ground, which would make a timely escape all but impossible. The fury was burning in the Doctor’s eyes as he closed up on Jack. “It couldn’t go on like that! Disease and hatred and war and egoism. Humankind was tearing itself up, the strong always with their feet in the weaks’ faces. I’m just testing what can be done, but the changes I’ve made are already better than any of the ridicules patching I’ve wasted my time with so far. I save one person and ten die. I save ten and two countries slaughter each other. I’ve been applying plasters hoping to cure cancer with it. Time to cut the malfunctioning tissue out, once and f-,” the Doctor’s words caught in his throat and he stumbled backwards. With a hand clutched to his head he leaned against the wall.

 

“Doctor?!” Jack should have taken the chance to flee, check if any of his teammates were still alive but his concern for the Time Lord momentarily drove the anger out of his mind, but not the suspicion, so he stayed where he was.

 

“Doctor, what’s wrong?” he asked, hoping to find some sort of explanation for the Time Lord’s sudden change of hearts in this sudden physical reaction.

 

“Headache,” the Doctor said, forcing the words out as if he was struggling to speak and breathe at the same time. “They keep coming.”

 

“When did they start?” Jack wanted to know. He edged his way very slowly closer to the Doctor.

 

“Months ago,” the Doctor replied through clenched teeth.

 

“Where?” Jack dug deeper, coming to a stop next to the man he had once considered to be his friend and maybe still did.

 

“TARDIS.”

 

“Who was with you?”

 

“No one, I was... alone.” The Doctor’s face was ashen and his knees gave in. Jack cast all care aside and caught the Doctor by his arm. He waited for the instant punishment for his naivety, but nothing happened.

 

This was not the answer Jack had hoped for. A distant planet or an evil monster would have explained everything, but the Doctor alone in his TARDIS? Could something have found its way onboard? Something that had messed with the Doctor’s head? Maybe even possessed him? Jack knew about alien species that could temper with their host’s personality in rather nasty ways.

 

“We gotta get you into our medical bay. Check what-“

 

“Don’t you think I did that already?!” the Doctor snapped and pulled his arm back. “When the headaches started I ran all kinds of scans. There’s no explanation for them, no… alien presence, no virus!” Without Jack’s support he had to hold onto the wall again to keep his balance, so when a new wave of agony hit him he sank to his knees.

 

Jack watched helplessly. The Doctor wouldn’t let him touch him and his answered didn’t help either. If Jack assumed that he hadn’t lied to him so far and that he had found no reason for his headaches, then maybe there was no disease or drug or parasite involved. Then what could make the Doctor change his behaviour that drastically? Carrying these horrible headaches in its wake? It wasn’t as if Jack hadn’t had enough on his plate already, even without another Doctor-esque mystery! It shouldn’t be the _Doctor’s_ head Jack was worrying about! He hadn’t rented the small apartment in Chiswick to babysit _him_ , but to keep an eye out for...

 

A shudder ran up Jack’s spine, suddenly he was very aware of the flickering light bulb above them. His job was to keep an eye on Donna after the meta-crisis, because he knew one wrong memory could make her mind burn up. A meta-crisis with the Doctor... Jack had believed Donna was the sole carrier of the aftermath, or, if there was another part who suffered, then that it would be the cloned Doctor. But what if the Doctor had been hurt during the process? What if something in _him_ had broken and all this was the result of-

 

An elbow connected with Jack’s jaw and lifted him off of his feet. He hit the ground, banging the back of his head and stars exploded before his eyes. He had forgotten how strong Time Lords were. He had let his guards down.

 

When the stars faded, Jack could see the Doctor towering over him. His face pale and drenched in cold sweat, but he was able to keep himself upright again. They looked at each other, both of them breathing hard, but only the Doctor was pointing a gun at Jack’s face. “You can’t kill me,” Jack said. It was not a plea and not a threat, just a fact and the Doctor knew that.

 

“It’d still hurt,” the Doctor answered and released the safety of Jack’s gun. Why had he left it on the desk? He should have been more careful. Jack didn’t move. He kept his eyes trained on the Doctor, not the gun. Pain or not, it didn’t matter, what mattered was whether or not the Doctor was so far gone that he would shoot someone just to inflict pain.

 

“Stay out of things that you don’t understand,” the Doctor said, once again in this calm manner of his, but his chest was still rising and falling with the aftermath of the pain. “This isn’t your game.”

 

“No,” Jack agreed, “no, it’s not.”

 

Finally the Doctor lowered the gun, but he held onto it as he left. Jack remained on the ground for another minute or two before he climbed to his feet. If he was right, and he usually could trust his guts, then the Doctor wasn’t up against some parasite or monster. He was fighting against himself and that was about the only enemy Jack feared was capable of destroying the Doctor. If this was true though, then Jack had a way of helping the Doctor. And this way lived in Chiswick and was currently planning her wedding.

 

x-x-x-x-x

 

“Donna?”

 

“I’m coming, for Christ-! Oh, gramps.” Donna turned around and found not her mother but her grandfather standing in the doorway of the kitchen, his woollen hat pulled deep down into his face against the biting cold. Despite the weather and being shouted at by Donna, he was smiling.

 

“Take your time. I told Sylvia she’s making too much of a fuss about things. We’ll be there way ahead of time, she’s just worried, you know? ‘Bout not getting the best place for the wedding.”

 

How did her grandfather manage to make even her mother sound like a caring and reasonable person?

 

“I know. I’ll be there in a moment, okay?”

 

“You don’t have to come, if you don’t feel up to it.”

 

Now it was Donna’s turn to smile. Ever since her accident two things had changed, her mother had stopped telling her how useless she was (most of the time anyway) and her grandfather had started to treat her like a raw egg.

 

“Why shouldn’t I be up to it? Driving about in a warm car, looking at different churches. Not exactly what you call stressful.”

 

“Just sayin’,” Wilfred replied and averted his eyes. He would deny treating Donna with kid gloves as long as he lived, but he couldn’t fool his granddaughter.

 

“Thanks, just let me finish my toast and I’ll be ready,” Donna said and her grandfather nodded.

 

With a sheepish smile he left and returned to the car where Sylvia was waiting. She had refused to wait a second longer while Donna was getting ready, looking for her purse and having breakfast and thus condemned herself and her father to waiting in the cold. For her grandfather’s sake, Donna hurried to spread jam on two slices of toast. She stuffed one into her mouth and took the other slice, her purse, and her coat and was almost at the main door when someone knocked on the back door.

 

Donna grumbled, put her purse and the toast down on the table next to the phone, and hurried to the backdoor. She wiped the jam off of her lips, opened the door, and stopped short. A man with dark hair and blue eyes was standing right in front of Donna, positively beaming at her.

 

He had broad shoulders which weren’t hidden, but accentuated by a long, black leather coat, and when he asked Donna if she could spare a moment, she heard an American accent.

 

“No, n-not really, I was just going out” Donna said, not without regretting having to send the handsome stranger away.

 

“Nothing important I hope? Because you have to cancel. No, wait. Scratch that. Nothing else could possibly be that important. Do you mind?” he pointed at the hallway behind Donna. “It’s freezing out here.”

 

In Donna’s fantasy, she’d already seen herself asking the stranger inside, sharing a hot cup of tea to dispel the cold, but now that he actually wanted to enter her house without an invitation, she felt more than a little wary of him. Suddenly his strength and the American accent weren’t sexy anymore, but a threat. “Look, uhm-“

 

“Captain Jack Harkness,” he introduced himself with a promising wink.

 

“Mr Harkness, fine-“

 

“Captain. If you don’t mind.”

 

Donna glowered. “Look, _mate_ , I was just about to leave the house. I dunno where you’re from, but around here you don’t just go knocking on strangers’ doors and demand to be let it. Cheers.” And Donna gave the door a push and it slammed shut right in the captain’s face. Why were the handsome ones always the nutjobs?

 

“Come on, Donna. Let me in!” The captain knocked against the door again. Donna stared at his outline behind the little window.

 

“How do you know my name?!” she asked through the locked door. The door plate just said ‘Mott/Noble’, it gave no first names away. “What kind of stalker are you?!”

 

“I’m not a stalker!” the captain replied. At the same time, Donna heard her mother honking from the other side of the house. By the sound of it, she was more than a little angry.

 

“Who are you?” Donna demanded to know.

 

“I told you. It’s me, Jack. Donna, we used to be friends, even if you can’t remember. Please, I need your help, let me in.”

 

Her mother drummed an impatient tattoo on the car’s horn. Donna glanced over her shoulder then back to the door behind which the stranger waited for her to let him in. She could turn on her heels and run out of the house to the safety of her mother and grandfather. They would go looking for a church to have the wedding in. They would pick up Shaun on the way and probably have curry for dinner... Or she could open the door to let this ominous stranger in. The stranger who seemed to know her name and something about the memory loss. A stranger that couldn’t exist according to her family, as they had filled her in about the time she’d forgotten, and they had never mentioned a captain Jack Harkness.

 

Her mother honked once more, long and impatient, and Jack hammered on the door. “I know you’re scared, but you have to help me. All of us, you are the only one who can! If you don- Oh, hi. Wouldn’t have thought that works.”

 

Donna had opened the door mid-sentence and looked at Jack. Still there, still handsome and strange.

 

“You need _my_ help?” she asked making sure not to open the door farther than she absolutely had to. “Mine?” Her foot was planted firmly behind it in case the captain tried to force his way inside, but he made no such attempt. Donna still didn’t trust him, but he had asked for her help... Donna didn’t know why, but when she looked at the man she felt the buzz of adrenaline and excitement.

 

“Oh, yes. I don’t want to lie to you. It’s gonna be dangerous and defeat would have horrible consequences. You... might question your sanity along the way, so I can’t force you to say yes, but you’re my last hope.”

 

Donna eyed the captain up, really this time. Not too ogle, but to find out more about him. His boots looked like they were ready for combat and if Donna wasn’t much mistaken she could spot the outline of a gun at the man’s side and his face... Everything about him screamed ‘Adventure!’ Donna hadn’t known how utterly bored she’d felt in her life until this man had appeared. She had always felt like her life was enough, she _loved_ her life, but suddenly this house, Chiswick, the whole planet seemed too small for her.

 

She waited with her hand on the door handle, expecting to hear the small voice of reason in her head, telling her to close the door and leave, but the only voice that spoke to her said, “ _Allonsy_!” and she opened the door and let Jack Harkness in.

 

“Wait here,” she told him and hurried out of the house through the front door. Autumn hit her hard and its wind bit her face, but she ignored it, she felt as if she was running on an internal power source that would keep her warm wherever she went.

 

“Finally!” her mother snapped. She opened her mouth once more to start a proper rant, but Donna was faster.

 

“I’m not coming. Go without me.”

 

“What?!” Sylvia glared at her, but her grandfather’s looked was a worried one.

 

“You alright?” he asked

 

“Yes,” Donna said and realised she was grinning, so she tried again, a little more convincingly. “Yes, I just feel a bit under the weather. Do you mind going with Shaun?”

 

“You can’t be serious!” Sylvia exclaimed.

 

“Of course we will, love,” Wilfred ignored his daughter and Donna hugged him and gave her mum a fleeting hug, too.

 

“You sure you don’t want someone to stay with you?” Sylvia called after her and Donna appreciated that the question was only 60% based on the suspicion that Donna was faking her illness.

 

“I’ll be fine. Say ‘hi’ to Shaun for me!” And then she vanished inside the house again, locked the door and joined the captain in the living room. The wind had tousled her hair and her face was red form the cold, but the smile stuck to her face. “Okay, captain. I’m listening.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for taking longer than expected to upload this. I’d promise to be quicker next time, but that’d be a lie.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the second chapter. Oh, and whoever found the main-character-marker that has snuck its way into this chapter, can add 10 points to their bonus-point account.


	3. Bits and Pieces

Donna’s initial excitement quickly died away while she was sitting next to Jack on the sofa in the living room and listened to his story. The more he talked, the clearer it became to Donna. He really was a nutjob. And so was she for having passed on the trip with her family in order to listen to this so called ‘captain’.

  
“I can’t give you every detail, it’s too dangerous, you see?,” he said whenever there was a hole in his story. And there were lots. What Donna had understood once Jack had finished talking, was that she hadn’t lost her memory in a car crash, but it had been erased in order to keep her mind from combusting because of some kind of alien presence in her head. She couldn’t remember the time she had forgotten, or else she would die.

  
“Which is why I have to keep this as vague as possible. It’s still risky... One wrong word and a fatal memory could be triggered,” the captain apologized. Jack himself claimed to be a time traveller who worked with an organization to keep planet Earth safe from aliens. When it came to his own adventures he didn’t mind going into detail at all, Donna hadn’t been present after all.

  
“So let me get this straight,” Donna said. Her eyes had been jumping to the clock a lot lately. The captain had been talking for a little more than an hour and Donna finally decided that she had hear about enough of this nonsense. “You’ve been watching me ever since I’ve lost my memory-“

  
“Yes, but only to keep you safe,” Jack was quick to add, but Donna had been listening long enough and just kept talking. By now, she was standing next to the window, her arms crossed before her chest.

  
“-and yet you’ve come here, risking my safety, because every piece of information you give me could kill me-“  
  
“It’s a calculated risk-,” Jack chipped in again.  
  
“And of course you cannot answer any of my questions, because of this ‘calculated risk’. So now you what? Just expect me to believe all this bullshit about aliens, time travel and lost memories?!”

  
“Look at it that way, if I were a fraud, wouldn’t I have a much more believable story to offer than this? Anything that far-fetched can only be the truth… right?” he said with a rather charming smile. Donna’s expression remained icy and the captain wiped that grin off of his face again. Instead he crossed his arms and looked Donna straight in the eye.  
  
“I am not lying to you. Donna, we haven’t spent much time together before you lost your memory, but I’ve been there on the day you-,“ once more the captain stopped himself the same way he had done so many times before when he had been about to disclose ‘risky’ information to Donna. He rested his arms on his upper legs, as if the physical support could help him in this situation. “I was there on the day everything went wrong. And you were amazing. You were brave and clever and…”  
  
“Stop flattering me,” Donna said. People like Jack usually tried doing that to convince people like her, plain people, they assumed she didn’t get much validation and offered her just that. It used to work in school and for most of her early twenties. It didn’t anymore.  
  
“I am just being honest,” Jack said calmly. “I am trying to make you see why I am here, even though it means risking your life. Because that’s the important bit. Not whether or not I get you to believe in aliens and time travel, that bit comes sooner or later anyway. I need you to understand the reason I’ve come to you today. And I need you to forgive me for it.”  
  
“But I don’t understand it!” Donna replied. “If you’re such a great alien hunter then why take the risk and ask me for help?”  
  
Jack smiled. “Alien hunter? Right, I forgot. For you aliens are those egg-headed green rubber figures. Aliens are no animals, Donna, and I don’t hunt them, except if they attack the people on this planet. Think of different alien species as different cultures. Some more civilized, some less, some good, some bad, but not just monsters out of cheap horror films.”  
  
Donna bit the skin of her cheek. Nothing Jack said made much sense, yet she couldn’t quite make herself believe he was simply a headcase. And hadn’t she heard rumours? Rumours about hospitals that vanished and re-appeared on the moon? Rumours about space ships over London on Christmas? Hadn’t she always felt she was missing something big?  
  
“So… let’s assume there is such a thing as aliens,” she said and she saw Jack’s expression brightening. “This alien you need my help with is… bad, right? Really bad?”  
  
Jack’s newly found smile dropped once more. “No. He is... he used to be one of the good guys. The best.”  
  
“What happened?”  
  
“I’m not entirely sure, but from what I know, it seems that what happened to you - when you lost your memory - affected him as well. You have a piece of his mind in yours and it’d be enough to kill you. We never expected he would actually miss this piece, but it seems during the process - the meta-crisis - a piece of him splintered. Not enough to kill him, not even enough for him to notice right away, but enough to leave him... I don’t know, you see? I can only speculate what happened after the meta-crisis. And what I believe is that after everything that had happened, he was kind of broken. The meta-crisis left a tiny crack in him. Not bad by itself but when something more powerful hit the same spot – a strange influence or a traumatic experience or whatever – the crack grew.”  
  
Donna couldn’t help but imagine this alien as some kind of glass creature lined with cracks radiating from a little hole somewhere in the middle. “But how?” she asked, trying to make sense of what she had heard. “You said the meta-crisis was something that happened to me. How is this alien-person involved?”  
  
“He... was the one who did it,” Jack said slowly, reverting to his secretive tone. “He saved your life after you had accidentally ended up with a piece of his mind in yours. Do you see? You’re carrying a piece of his mind in yours. He locked it away, together with your memories.”  
  
Donna touched her temple, almost expecting to feel a piece of broken alien-glass sticking out of her skull.  
  
“I promised him to keep an eye on you. To make sure you never remember... Now look at me, risking your life like this… But I wouldn’t, if I had a choice. I do not have this choice anymore, because now this ‘crack’ has grown. It’s changed him and he’s doing things he would regret, if he were himself.  
  
“He’s tempering with the fixed points of our world. Uhm, fixed points are moments in time that always have to happen. You could go back in time and save some people if you like, but others… you couldn’t help them as much. Humans can’t tell which is which, but Time Lords, that’s, uhm, that’s what his species is called, they know when they’ve found a fixed point and they leave it alone. Usually.”  
  
“But he doesn’t?”  
  
“No. Well, he still recognises them as fixed points, but that doesn’t stop him from changing them. Big and small events, and he thinks he’s doing the right thing. He’s saving lives after all, but the consequences are disturbing and he just doesn’t see it. He believes he just needs to get the hang of it.”  
  
“Okay, I’ve got to ask this... not knowing you and all. Couldn’t he be right? If he’s one of those aliens who know how time works, doesn’t he know best what he can do and what he can’t? What if he just needs time and then he can stop really bad catastrophes from happening.”  
  
Donna expected Jack to be angry with her. To roll his eyes and tell her she was an idiot for even asking, but he nodded. “A possibility I considered also. I thought we can deal with the bad consequences for a while, if it’s for the greater good, but that has been two months ago and things only get worse, not better. At this rate he will have twisted earth’s time line beyond recognition long before he’s made any progress. Not that I believe progress to be possible at all, his kind have banned changing fixed points for a reason.”  
  
“His kind? The other Time Lords, right? Then why don’t they go and stop him?”  
  
“Because they can’t. They have died in a war against really bad creatures. Only he is left and that doesn’t exactly agree with his dented sanity.”  
  
Donna and Jack fell silent, two humans who grieved the extinction of an ancient species, until Donna dared to ask the one central question. “How could I help him? Call yourself alien hunter or not, but you know what you’re doing and, if I believe you, I could die the moment I remember too much. I’m not an expert and I’m not a Time Lord. I’m just me.”  
  
Jack nodded. “True. But the Time Lords are gone and no expert could help him where our friend has gone. What he needs is someone to stop him and I’ve been told that just Donna Noble is the right woman for the job.”  
  
“Who said that?”  
  
“The Doctor himself. That’s his name, ‘the Doctor’, or at least the only name we know him under. Uhm, Donna?”  
  
Donna had backed away from the window. A sudden burst of energy made it impossible for her to keep still. Her heart was beating in her ears and she felt much too warm all of a sudden. A quick succession of images flashed before her mind’s eye. A giant spider. Snow out of nowhere. The dead body of a woman on gravel. Billions of stars only an arm’s length away. Running away from living shadows. Her best friend, laughing.  
  
Donna stumbled blindly forward, her leg hit the coffee table and she fell backwards. The pain in her rear was overshadowed by the agony in her head. She pressed her hands against her temples, scared that her head would explode the second she let go.  
  
At some point Jack placed his hands on her shoulders. “It’s okay, you don’t have to remember him,” she heard him saying, but his voice seemed to be miles away.  
  
Through the agony, Donna could feel her mind trembling. She couldn’t take this. She couldn’t cling to these memories or they would rip her apart. Reluctantly, Donna let go of the images. She wanted to know more about the man she’d caught a glimpse of, but the longer she held onto him, the further away everything else seemed to get.  
  
She knew this was the Doctor she had seen and she knew it was his mind she felt in her own. Not that she had ever been aware of the other mind in her head, but now that it had made itself felt, she couldn’t ignore its presence any longer. There he was, in a dark part of her brain, behind a thick wall. And without further warning, he gave the wall a gentle nudge

  
She took a deep, trembling breath and slowly opened her eyes. She wiped the tears away she hadn’t realised she had cried. So it was all true. Everything Jack had said… Donna felt dizzy and nausea crawled up on her. So she had been to outer space! To other planets with aliens on them! That meant there were aliens.

Donna shiver. She mentally reached out for the piece behind the wall and nudged back.

"Do you have a plan?" Donna asked, she was surprised to hear how steady her voice sounded.  
  
The idea was too big and too silly to comprehend all at once. Much too weird. She just wanted the captain to leave or to walk away herself! But somewhere, the vague feeling persisted that she had the capability to deal with this madness. And this thought was almost as unnerving as the idea of having been mind-wiped by an alien.  
  
Jack watched her get up, attentive, as if he feared her head would blow up any second. When it didn’t, he nodded. “We need you to return the missing part of his mind. If the Doctor can be put back together there might be a chance to reason with him.”  
  
“But if that’s an option, why didn’t the Doctor do that in the first place?”  
  
“Because this is nothing you can do yourself. And at the time the meta-crisis happened, he believed he was the only Time Lord left.”  
  
“Didn’t you say he is?”  
  
“Well, he used to be the only Time Lord left who... cared about the rules. There is another one. We thought he was dead, but apparently he’s rather difficult to kill. He might be able to help us, but I have to warn you. Do not trust him. He might help us out, but he’s not our friend.” And with this ominous introduction, Jack left the living room and headed for the back door. He stopped and raised his eyebrows at Donna. She gave a brief nod.  
  
Jack opened the door. And Donna watched, as a second man entered her house. He was shorter than Jack, with blonde hair and a scruffy look about him.  
  
There was no sense of warmth left in Jack’s voice as he said, “Donna, meet the Master.”  
  
Donna frowned at this title. The Master just crossed his arms and grinned. “Well, looks like the squad to save the Doctor is complete. A lunatic, a temp and captain America. What could possibly go wrong?”

 

x-x-x-x-x

 

 Donna had insisted that they don’t leave before tomorrow. Firstly, she wanted to explain herself to her family and not just vanish with nothing but a note. Considering they were about to annoy a really powerful alien, this might be the last time she could talk to them. And secondly, Jack’s ‘plan’ turned out to have several, somewhat crucial holes.  
  
How would they catch the Doctor? He could be anywhere, at any time, and he didn’t exactly fancy meeting Jack.

  
What would they do if the Doctor didn’t agree to have the Master put his mind back together? According to the scruffy Time Lord, this procedure required both him and the Doctor, and of course Donna, who all more or less agreed on doing this.

  
What would they do after the Doctor’s mind was put back together? This wouldn’t magically fix the changed time line or make the Doctor change his mind. According to Jack, it would help him deal with the trauma (or whatever had happened to him) in a saner way than destroying earth’s history. According to the Master this would only give them the same crazy Time Lord but now without headaches to stop him.  
  
Donna liked Jack better, not least because he didn’t constantly refer to her as ‘the human’ or ‘his pet’, but couldn’t deny that the Master had a point. If the Doctor was convinced he was doing the right thing, there was no guarantee his mind, back together in one piece, wouldn’t agree.  
  
No, there were too many unanswered questions and Donna’s headache was getting worse with the minute, so she sent Jack and the Master away. She would get another night in her own bed, in her own home, with her mother and her grandfather and her fiancé. And she would tell them she remembered the Doctor (at least partly). According to Jack, at least her mum and gramps knew about everything and had kept quiet to protect her.  
  
She wasn’t mad at them. At first she had thought she would be, had waited to feel angry and betrayed, but nothing came. They had thought the memory would kill her, had been told sharing the truth with her would mean destroying her. No, Donna couldn’t blame them. She doubted she had acted any different, had their positions been reversed.  
  
And Shaun? Well, he knew nothing about nothing yet.  
  
Oh, this would be a fun talk to have.  
  
Donna sat down on her bed, watching the wind carrying orange and gold leafs past her window and tried to stay calm. Certainly she was upset after everything she had just learn. Aliens. Memory Loss. Insanity.  
  
She waited for the shock and panic to kick in as she sat there watching, but all she felt was impatience. She didn’t for one moment really believe all this was just a hoax, or the trick of two mad men. No, this captain Jack was for real and so was the Master, she just knew it. And that meant, so was the Doctor. A friend she had forgotten about.  
  
A friend who had erased her memory...  
  
Donna wished she could remember how it had happened. In her mind a scene took place in which she rather tearily begged Doctor to save her life. Sure, she was excited to know about space and time travel! But then again, she knew it was too much for her. She just wasn’t the right person for going on such adventures.

She hoped she hadn’t been too pathetic after she had learned that she might die. She wished she had been at least a little brave... But wasn’t the fact that she was alive proof enough that she hadn’t been? That she had rather forgotten... everything than die with some dignity?  
  
Donna sighed. It was no good thinking about it. Jack had said the Doctor looked perfectly human, but Donna just couldn’t recall the face she had seen before and maybe that was for the better. It could just as well kill her. Still, Donna wondered whether, if she could remember him, she would miss him right now. She wished she would, but you can’t miss someone you don’t know.  
  
The skin on her neck prickled with the feeling of someone watching her. She turned around. The room was empty. Her room was on the first floor, well blocked from view by trees. Slowly, Donna stood up and scanned the room with her eyes. The sun outside caught in the leaves and cast shadows over her lavender walls that wandered over her wooden shelves and illuminated the tiny dust particles in the air. No mattered where Donna turned, she couldn’t shake off the feeling of someone standing right behind her.  
  
And then she felt it. A nudge. The same as she’d felt before in her mind.  
  
Donna relaxed. For a moment she had expected the Doctor to have found her, now that she was in on the story. Well... in a way he had. There was a part of him in her mind after all, but she guessed this part of him was on their side... right?  
  
She nudged back. It wasn’t much of a conversation they could have like this, but at least she knew he was there and she could let him know she knew. Come to think of it, Donna wondered...  
  
“Can you... hear me?” she asked, feeling just slightly silly for talking to her own head.  
  
Nudge.  
  
Donna smiled. “This is bonkers! You’ve been there ever since I had this ac- err, the meta-crisis and I had no idea... Does that mean you were around all the time?”  
  
The next nudge was more hesitant and Donna wondered why, until she realised this meant she had had a silent observer for months. Boring work days, watching silly TV shows, staying over at Shaun’s... Oh God, sex with Shaun!  
  
Donna could feel the presence cringing and clapped a hand before her mouth, but couldn’t stifle a giggle. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t know about you then!” She sat down on her bed again. This was the craziest conversation she had ever had, and she had talked to the all-but-deaf mechanic that came to her office to fix the air con about shrimp-fishing. This was like taking to a ghost. Silent, invisible, but still there.  
  
“I bet this isn’t what you usually do? Being locked up in a boring old temp after you’ve been to space...”  
  
No response this time. For the first time Donna wondered how big this chunk of the Doctor’s mind was that she carried around. Maybe it was so small that it got exhausted quickly... What if it died?!  
  
The next nudge was much longer. It didn’t feel exhausted. “Oh, okay, you’re still alive... Good, because you... Well, you’ve heard what Jack said, you – real you – is having a bit of a mental episode right now and we need you. Oh, I guess that’s my job. I’m like a nanny for a piece of mind. Well, at least that sounds more interesting than being a secretary.”  
  
A series of short nudges in quick succession. “What are you trying to tell me?”  
  
Nudge nudge nudgenudgenudge.  
  
“Sorry... I’m not sure what you mean... Is that Morse?” Donna discarded the idea as quickly as it had come. The nudging was more like a vague feeling, not a clear knocking sound. Getting a precise encoded message across like this wasn’t going to work.  
  
Eventually the piece of the Doctor came to the same conclusion and the nudging stopped.  
  
“Sorry, love, I’ll try to come up with a way you can answer me,” she promised. “That could be useful... I still have tons of questions, but I guess I’d better ask real you, once you’re put back together. Though... I don’t get it. How come the Doctor is suffering from losing a little piece of his mind, but you - the little piece - you seem fine?  
  
“Well, as far as I know. Maybe you’re a psychopath as well, but what can you do, locked up in my head like this?... Are you a psychopath? Am I going to crave cutting up people any time soon?”  
  
Two nudges and if Donna hadn’t known any better, she would have said they felt amused. “Yeah... we definitely need to find a way to talk properly.”  
  
A car pulled into their street and Donna recognized it as their own. A glance at her clock told her that the day had passed her by without her realizing. The feeling of impatience, of wanting to do something, had vanished. Suddenly she just wanted more time between now and the moment she would have to tell her family she was about to help a person from her past who was currently trying to destroy the planet. Oh, and of course if the memory came back and the wall between her, and the piece of mind collapsed before she had gotten rid of it, she would die...  
  
Yes, she definitely didn’t look forward to having this conversation.  
  
Giving the Doctor a final nudge she pushed herself up and left her room. Better she got over with it, before the idea of climbing out of the window and just leaving a note would get even more tempting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought it's most likely that Donna assumed *she* was the one asking the Doctor to erase her memory, which is why she isn't very mad at him yet.  
> Let's see how that changes once she has learned the truth~
> 
> Chapters 4 and 5 are written as well. Chapter 6 and everything following still needs some work :/ It's no good. Anyway! Thanks for your amazing comments, they really keep me going :*


	4. Goodbyes

Donna wasn’t sure if she had expected Shaun to cry when she told them all.

Maybe. When they were alone.

She had definitely expected her mum to cry, even if half of it would have been angry tears.

Neither of them cried. Her grandfather did  tough and it almost broke Donna’s heart.

“Gramps, it’s okay. I won’t be away for long,” she promised, begging her mother with silent looks to say something comforting, but she seemed too shocked to say anything at all. “And I- uhm, I have these blokes with me. Jack, he’s brilliant, you’d love him. He’s been working with aliens since forever. And the other one, err... he is an alien. We have an actual alien on our side! That’s something, isn’t it?”

“An alien is who did all this to us!” Sylvia shrieked. “Your fine Doctor! Because of him we had to keep you in the dark about everything! Worry you might remember and drop dead at any moment!”  
  
Wilfred put his shaking hand on Sylvia’s arm. “Now, now. He did what he could to bring our Donna back home alive. Donna, if he needs you- if the world needs you - you have to go, love. And do what only you can do, but... be careful, all right?”  
  
Donna nodded. She felt unable to do anything else.  
  
“Last time he was with her and she almost died! Now she wants to _fight_ him!” Sylvia shouted and Donna could hear a new level of hysteria in her mother’s voice. Then something new happened, Sylvia turned to her and begged, “please, Donna, don’t go. That night in the rain...”  
  
“Sylvia!”  
  
“I know! I’m not saying anything dangerous, it’s just... I thought you were dead when dad came in with you- I thought... my little girl...” Now Sylvia was crying too and Donna had to fight her own tears back down. Seeing her family like this was worse than being yelled at. Sylvia pushed her chair back and left the room and the others knew it was best to give her some minutes to gather herself.  
  
“She knows it’s the right thing, just don’t expect her to get too excited about the news,” her grandfather said and wiped his own tears away. “I’ll go looking for her in a moment. When... when are you going to leave?”  
  
Donna swallowed a thick lump before she dared to use her voice. “Jack’s picking me up ‘round two in the morning. We need to catch a plane.” While talking, Donna made careful eye-contact with the kitchen floor. She wasn’t sure she could stand looking into the wet eyes of her grandfather a moment longer.  
  
Wilfred mumbled something that was probably meant to be encouraging, kissed Donna’s forehead and left the room. Donna couldn’t remember ever having felt worse about herself. Even the piece of the Doctor kept still and Donna was glad it did. She didn’t want him to see how she had to treat the three most important people in her life, just to save someone who, according to Jack, used to be her best friend. A fine best friend! Erased her memory and now made her risk her life to stop him from destroying the plan-

  
“So, how long is ‘not too long’?” Donna had almost forgotten about Shaun standing in the room with her. He shuffled his feet, but kept his eyes on Donna. “I reckon you don’t want me to come along, or you would have asked?”  
  
Donna didn’t answer even though she had heard the silent question in his statement. Shaun was right, she didn’t want him to come along, and she wouldn’t insult him by telling him she thought it was too dangerous. Instead she replied, “dunno when I’ll be back exactly. The Master, err, that’s... that’s the name of the other alien, he said the Doctor would probably show up for another fixed... It’s really complicated, Shaun, I don’t even get half of it. It will be a few days. Maybe a week, but not longer than that.”  
  
Shaun nodded. “I don’t mind waiting for a week. I mean you- You’ll come back, right? So one week’s nothing.”  
  
Donna smiled. “I will come back. I’m not that easy to kill.”  
  
“Right. Yeah, that too. I just wanted to say- When this Doctor’s okay again- The two of you used to... travel, didn’t you?”  
  
Donna’s smile froze and she took a step closer to Shaun. “I don’t know this Doctor. All I know is that he is dangerous and right now he’s seriously hurting people. I just want to learn more about myself. About the woman I used to be before the reset button was pressed.”  
  
“And what if this woman doesn’t love me...?” Shaun asked and the way his voice trailed off, the way his eyes lingered on her for a moment too long before he looked away, told Donna he hadn’t managed to add “but the Doctor?”  
  
Donna could have sworn she had felt the piece of the Doctor shuffle, but she dismissed it. “Just a week, okay? Then I’ll come back and we can do all the wedding stuff we want together. Look at churches and choose music and get free cake samples,” she tried a smile and Shaun replied it weakly. They kissed and Donna held onto Shaun for a long time. Despite her own resolve, she might not survive to come back to him after all.

 

x-x-x-x-x

 

Donna packed her things and changed into clothes that would keep her warm in the cold of the night. Around midnight she sat down on the stairs and waited for a car to pull in and pick her up to the first adventure she could remember.  
  
“You don’t have to go.”  
  
Donna jumped. Her mother had appeared behind her on the staircase, clad in her dressing gown and a steaming cup of tea in her hands. Her eyes were still a little red and Donna felt guilty again.  
  
“Mum-“  
  
“I’m not saying you’re not allowed to go, you’re no child. And I’m not saying you won’t go, because you’re you. All I’m saying is that you don’t have to go. No one would blame you for not risking your life for someone who has made himself a stranger to you.”  
  
If Donna wasn’t much mistaken, her mother hadn’t sounded that gentle in years and Donna wasn’t quite sure how to react. “I, uhm... Jack said, if we don’t help him, he might destroy the world.”  
  
“There are other people out there to stop that from happening... Some years ago, I’d have said you’re biting off more than you can chew, because these people are more qualified than you’ll ever be, but... Donna, you’ve saved the world before. You did so many important things when you were with this man. And no matter what I think off him, he wanted us to know how amazing and important and good you can be.” Sylvia rolled her eyes. “He was very full of himself, you see? As if we didn’t already know all that!”  
  
Donna just stared at her mother, not sure if her ears had played a trick on her, because it had sounded like her mother had just told her she was proud of Donna. Sylvia gave her a tearful smile, the same she wore while talking about Donna’s father. “To us you’ve always been the most important woman in all of creation. You’re my daughter after all, what else could you be? But... if you feel like you have to go out and prove it again... Neither your gramps nor me will stop you.”  
  
A hot tear rolled down Donna’s cheek. Not only because she couldn’t remember her mother ever having been that openly encouraging, but because her words rang a bell. A huge, loud bell, but it was locked away behind the same wall as the piece of the Doctor was, so Donna couldn’t say why those words struck her, only that they made her head pound painfully, so she tried not to think about them too hard.  
  
She and her mother hugged, Sylvia almost spilled her tea on Donna’s anorak. And when they finally let go, Sylvia sniffed and announced, “I’m staying up until you leave!” and shuffled into the living room where she watched a late night rerun of one of the Harry Potter movies. Judging by the sounds of it, it was either the first or second one, but Donna couldn’t convince herself to follow her mother. She didn’t feel like getting lost in a fantasy world when her own life was just about to turn into a sci-fi adventure.  
  
So she sat there in the dark and listened for a car engine over the sounds of magical music and practices spells. 02:14 am the twin lights of a car finally shone through the window and Donna jumped to her feet, grabbed her trunk and hurried into the living room where her mother lay sleeping on the couch. She pressed a kiss to her cheek without waking her and left the house and Chiswick behind. Her next stop could be anywhere and this knowledge sent her heart fluttering.

 

x-x-x-x-x

 

_There will be violence in this chapter. If this sort of thing is not for you, skip the rest of the chapter. What you’ll miss will not be crucial to the story, only add to the character of the Time Lord Victorious._

  
  
Vicenzo Peruggia buttoned up his white smock as he left his hiding place in the Louvre. It was early morning, but the museum wouldn’t open its doors today.  
  
It would be incredibly simple. He passed by a worker and nodded his greetings, the worker acknowledged him with a grunt, but didn’t stop. Vincenzo was all but invisible in his disguise of just another employee. He waited until the Salon Carré was empty and then slipped inside.  
  
There she hung, smiling at him with this magnificent smile of hers, but it had always been the hair that had captivated Vincenzo. “Beautiful Mona Lisa,” he said and approached the portrait as gingerly as he might have approached the real woman.  
  
“You just have to love France during the 20st century,” a voice said, loudly but with a chit-chat tone to it. Vincenzo froze and spun around. A man was standing in the doorway that lead into the Salon, his hands tucked into his pockets and a smile on his face that didn’t quite reach his eyes. He wore a suite like a gentleman, but a coat like a common worker and as he approached Vincenzo he could spot the most ridiculous shoes on his feet. Vincenzo could only guess, but it seemed the man could have done with a good night’s sleep and a shave. His skin was sallow and his eyes looked red. Not to mention the hair that made the man look like he’d been walking through stormy weather for days.  
  
“I’m not sure I understand... Who-“ Vincenzo began, but the stranger waved his words away with a flick of his hand and stopped next to Vincenzo, looking at Mona Lisa.  
  
“What a painting! And what a woman! Fair, gentle, clever, everything you could wish for, but cold sober. The things I had to do to make her smile!” the man shook his head, for a second he seemed lost in the memory, then he turned around to Vincenzo with the air of someone who frequently dipped in and out of memories. “This is your cue to ask me what I had to do. I like it when people do that, they don’t even have to believe what I say, but everyone likes a good story, eh?”  
  
When Vincenzo still didn’t answer, but stared at the mad man before him, the stranger’s smile entirely vanished. “You’re no fun to talk to, Vincenzo. No offence. Am I being rude? I used to have people to tell me when I am... Things have changed though. Which is bad news for you, Vince. Can I call you Vince? Because you were about to steal the Mona Lisa. Yes! Don’t deny it, the only two people in this room know the truth already. The reasons for which you want that will never fully be cleared up, and to be completely honest with you, Vince, I’m past caring for something like reasons. I would have usually, but usually I wouldn’t have come here at all. At these times I was so busy fixing humankind’s mistakes. And- oy!”  
  
Vincenzo had taken the chance of the stranger having to draw breath to leg it. He ran away, leaving the gorgeous painting and this lunatic behind. How could he have guessed what Vincenzo was about to do?! Where had he gone wrong? Vincenzo turned a corner and his ears picked up on a strange sound like the wheeze of an ancient apparatus. And then the stranger stepped out of a corridor in front of Vincenzo. A less rational man than Vincenzo might have thought the man to be a sorcerer, but Vincenzo was sure the stranger was using a trick he simply didn’t understand, or maybe he knew a shortcut Vincenzo didn’t.  
  
The result, of course, was the same. Vincenzo stopped short and turned right into another hallway. A triumphant smile spread across his face the same moment an explosion cut through the air. A burning pain ripped through VIncenzo’s upper leg and sent him flying to the ground. Vincenzo cried out. His blood spread in a puddle on the ground and Vincenzo frantically, uselessly, pressed his hands against the wound in his leg.  
  
The stranger strolled down the hallway over to Vincenzo, the gun still held in his hand by his side. “I used to hate these. Do you see what you make me do, Vince?”  
  
Vincenzo shuffled backwards over the ground. The stranger quickly caught up with him without having to quicken his pace. He crouched down in front of the trembling thief, right in the puddle of Vincenzo’s blood. “As I said, times change. No-one knows that better than I do. These are difficult times and that means I have to make difficult decisions. Don’t make me decide I need to hurt you more. Because, let’s be clear on this, you’re not alive by accident. I didn’t miss. I might not have shot a gun in many, many years, but I haven’t forgotten how it works. I was aiming for you leg and if I hadn’t, if I had aimed for your head instead, we wouldn’t be talking right now. Do you understand? Am I even talking French? Or Italian? You’re not very talkative, are you?”  
  
Vincenzo whimpered, praying the mad man would kill him soon and not torture him any further.  
  
“Vince,” the man said and sounded threatening this time. “Do you understand? I need to be sure that you understand what you have to do now. A guard will come walking down here very soon and I want you to turn yourself in. Tell them what you tried to do. Tell them about me if you like, it makes no difference, because I’m not going to be here when they throw you into prison. But I will return and if I hear you came anywhere close to our painted lady again, I won’t aim for your leg. Got it?”  
  
With tears of pain and plain fear in his eyes, Vincenzo nodded his head. The stranger smiled, patted Vincenzo on the shoulder. Then he left, whistling to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm in a weird mental space right now... No idea when the next chapter will be up, but I'm trying really hard not to make you wait too long :) As always, thanks so much for your comments. They absolutely make my day


	5. To Joliet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our three comrades are heading for the US and Donna gets to talk to the Doctor for the first time in for ever. Well, -ish.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay! As always, real life has the habit of getting in the way. Good news are: I had a huge burst of motivation those last few days and I wrote tons for this story!  
> The slightly less good news? The scenes I wrote are set much later in the story and it’ll take some time till we get there.  
> Bear with me while I fill in the in-betweens. They are mapped out in my head and just need to find their way down to paper.
> 
> >> Also, thanks so much for all your lovely comments! They do mean the world to me and make writing so much more fun. You guys rock!<<

Jack sat in the driver's seat and steered the car down another motorway. In the darkness, Donna hadn't seen what kind of car it was, but it was small, had four doors and four seats, and the colour was, according to the Master's and Jack's bickering, either red or pink or purple.

 

The Master was sitting next to Jack on the front seat. He had his arms crossed and looked grumpy, but not tired. Donna wished she had slept a little before leaving. She adjusted in her seat and leaned her head against the windowpane. She couldn’t see the moon, but at least Libra illuminated the landscape a little. How did she even know this was what Libra looked like?

 

 _Stop putting things in my head_ , she thought and nudged the piece of the Doctor’s mind reproachfully.

 

He nudged back and Donna could have sworn she heard a chuckle.

 

“Where are we going anyway?” she asked, trying to distract herself from how warm and comfortable it was in the car and how tired she felt.

 

“As I said, the Master knows where fix points are, just like the Doctor,” Jack explained without taking his eyes off of the street. “We’re lucky. A fix point’s about to occur in two days in America, so that’s where we’re going. The Doctor’s going to show up too, trying to ‘fix’ the fixed point and thus destroying earth and eventually killing us all.”

 

“Super,” Donna said. “Well, the visiting America bit, not so much the destroying and killing part.”

 

“Nah, we won’t let that happen.”

 

“At least you’re trying,” the Master added with a sneer. “A space cowboy and a bored house-wife trying to stop the Oncoming Storm.”

 

“And you can add yourself to that list as well,” Jack added. “We have a deal, remember?”

 

The Master’s sneer turned sour. “Right. And I am what? The substitute for your precious team? Did anyone actually survive that explosion?”

 

In the rear-view mirror, Donna could see Jack’s look darkening. “They are all gonna be fine, but they’re not in travelling condition at the moment. That bomb was supposed to blow away the door and my office, not actually kill anyone.”

 

“Bomb?!” Donna sat up straight in her seat. So far she had thought of the Doctor as a lunatic with a time machine, no-one had told her he was actually using weapons.

 

“J-just a little one. And the Doctor knows I’m immortal- Long story, Donna – but, as I said, he knew I would survive the attack. He’s not a bad person, he’s just confused.”

 

“Completely barmy more like,” the Master corrected under his breath and Jack shot him a glare. Donna settled back in her seat and tried not to think about what she had gotten herself into here. An immortal guy, an alien who only supported them as long as Jack’s gun was in sight and she... All up against a bomb-planting, time-travelling mad man who could, for all Donna had learned from Jack, regenerate if he had to. So could the Master. To her it sounded awfully like everyone was a cat with nine lives and she was the mouse, scuttling over the battle field, without special powers or even a clue what to do. She had to think of her mother and her grandfather and Shaun and how much she wished she had gone with them to look for a nice church.

 

The monotone movement of the car and the warmth of the heating made it very easy to let her eyes slip shut and just think about the life she had left back. Chiswick. Their house. Their garden with the big tree Donna used to climb as a child. The tree grew before Donna’s eyes. Its roots covered the green ground and turned it brown. The branches spread and connected and criss-crossed until the sky was hidden from view. And in the middle of the tree, at its very core, a blue light shone and drew Donna nearer. She walked over the metal ground, up to a circular panel with blinking buttons and levers and touched her hand to the surface, a hum in her ears that sounded old and soothing like the voice of a mother.

 

The feeling of being watched made Donna’s skin crawl. When she turned around a stranger stood with her in the artificial room. Donna didn’t need to remember to know this was the Doctor. Tall and skinny, a pinstriped suit that clashed with his white trainers, impossible hair and a mega-watt smile.

 

“Hello,” he said softly.

 

Donna didn’t move. She stood there with her back against the control panel and stared at him. “I- I shouldn’t be seeing this, my mind... I might die.”

 

“You’re safe. This is no real memory of yours, only an image I created so we could... talk.”

 

Donna knew she should protest. This might be no memory, but it could still trigger her mind to remember... but all Donna could do was look about and take every last detail in. It all felt so familiar. “Where are we?” she wanted to know.

 

The Doctor’s smile faltered. “My ship... Let’s not talk about that now. The less you know the less likely you’ll remember anything.”

 

Donna rolled her eyes. “Yes, that’s what everyone keeps telling me. Do you have any idea what this is like? I’m just supposed to believe everything you lot are saying, but I never get any answers. Like who are you, exactly?”

 

“I’m the Doctor,” the Doctor said.

 

“Yeah, well, no shit, Sherlock,” Donna retorted. “I mean who are you to _me_? The Master says I’m your pet, Jack tells me we’re best friends, my mum believes you’re some sort of sugar daddy for me, and gramps just keeps telling me you made me happy.” Donna gave an exasperated shrug. “What have I gotten myself into, eh? Is any of those things true? Give me some sort of input, Martian, c’mon.”

 

The Doctor cast his eyes down but there was a big, sad smile on his face. “Never thought I’d hear that again,” he said and when he looked at her, Donna felt her chest tightening. There was a tenderness in his eyes that rang the faintest bell in her mind.

 

This was a dangerous game to play. “Okay, no answers then,” Donna said quietly and rubbed her hands over the goose bumps on her arms. “Don’t wanna die before we even enter the plane.” A beat passed between them. Donna glanced around the ship, making her way down the little staircase to where the Doctor was standing. She inspected him, and he watched her doing so with amusement. “I’d thought you were… bigger. You know? More intimidating.”

 

“Oh!” he drew himself up to his full height. “I am very intimidating! Ask anyone. ‘The Doctor? Yes, very scary!’”

 

Donna tilted her head. “Meh, we’ll see about that when I meet you in person.” They exchanged a tentative smile. Two people who’d gotten used to existing without each other. “So… you’re the thing in my head?” she asked slowly. “What piece of the Doctor are you then?”

 

“Just a piece. I’m not his ‘sanity’ if that’s what you thought. You can’t split a person into single traits, you can just... split a person.”

 

“Did it hurt?”

 

“No. I didn’t even realise I’d been split. Well, the real, physical me didn’t. I did of course, being locked up in here and all...”

 

“We’re bringing you back,” Donna told him, trying to cheer the poor thing up. “Back to the Doctor. Jack and the-“

 

“Yes, I know,” the Doctor beamed. “I can hear what you hear, remember? It’s very brave what you’re doing! And you’re wrong, by the way.”

 

“’Bout what?”

 

“About you not having any special powers. Jack didn’t merely choose you because you carry me in your head. That’s what I was trying to tell you in your bedroom. You’re not just a vessel, Donna Noble, you’re the only person who can talk to me – the real me – and talk some sense in him... me. Blimey, this is confusing!”

 

“Why should he listen to me?”

 

“Because you’re his, our, best friend. You’ve stopped us before and you can do it again.”

 

“I don’t even remember you!”

 

The Doctor took her hand and smiled, “I’ll stay with you. Fill in the details you need, but the most important part is you, and that you give him a piece of your mind, err, literary as much as figuratively.”

 

The Doctor and his ship flickered. “What’s wrong?” Donna asked.

 

“Time to wake up,” the Doctor said, looking about. “I thought we would have more time... Anyway, I’ll stay with you, Donna. Trust yourself, you’ll make the right choices.”

 

“Wait!” Donna said but it wasn’t the Doctor who answered her, but the angry honking of a driver in front of them. Donna stirred in her seat and looked about, remembering that she was in a car on her way to the airport, not in an alien ship.

 

“What did you say?” Jack asked.

 

“N-nothing,” Donna mumbled. “Are we there, yet?”

 

“Almost,” Jack replied and pointed at the airport in front of them. “America, here we come.”

 

x-x-x-x-x

 

 "Coffee," Donna coraked as they pushed their way through the crowd of people at Bolingbrook's Clow International Airport. "I need coffee. Now." 9 Hours locked up in a plane with the Master, who constantly complained about humankind's backward technology and Jack who, Donna was fairly sure about that, had had sex on the toilet. Not to mention the two of them bickering all the way to Illinois. Now she remembered why she detested long-distance flights.

 

“Donna, we’re meeting my friend Milo in ten minutes!” Jack said. Donna was sure she used to like Jack and she expected to start liking him again, but right now she couldn’t stand either of the two men she’d spent the last 9 hours jammed between.

 

“At least let me go to toilet. I’ll meet you outside. Just go, I’ll be fine.” And she hurried off with her bag, glad to get some distance between herself and the others. 9 hours!!

 

Donna found a public toilet between a sandwich shop and a drugstore and squeezed into one of the stalls. Afterwards she spent a long time just splashing water into her face. The water was cool and refreshing and slowly the queasy feeling in Donna’s stomach ebbed away. She hadn’t been able to sleep much on the plane and only had had half a croissant and some tea. Not only did her stomach object to staying put in such a stuffy environment for so long, but headaches of various intensity had taunted her all the way from London.

 

“You’d better not damaged this wall,” she said out loud, hoping the piece of Doctor in her mind was listening. She was the only person in the ladies’ room and she didn’t care if some security guy was watching her through a camera and thought she had gone barmy.

 

_I didn’t damage it!_

 

Donna jumped. The Doctor’s voice echoed through her mind like an actual thought. Had she only imagined hearing him? Now that she knew what his voice sounded like, maybe she had just-

 

_Donna, I’m actually talking to you. I- maybe I thinned the wall a little, but not dangerously so. Just so we can talk._

 

“You know that this wall is the only thing that keeps me alive?!” she snapped. “Stop thinning anything up there without my permission!”

 

_I had to! What good would my presence be, if you’re facing the real Doctor? I might be able to help you, but not if the only way to talk to you works through vague feelings._

 

Donna rubbed her forehead with a sigh.

 

_Sorry about the headaches... Try to hang in for a little longer. The Doctor will show up in two days and then we can fix him... us. You might even be able to remember!_

 

“Yeah... As long as I don’t remember too much before that happens.”

 

_I won’t let that happen._

 

“Thanks.”

 

With another sigh Donna grabbed her bag and left the toilet. She had just wanted some minutes for herself, away from those strange people she had forgotten about, but now... with the Doctor so audibly in her mind, it seemed she wouldn’t be able to get much me-time any time soon.

 

Just two days.

 

They had departed in London at 6 am. Nine hours flight time... but Illinois was six hours behind London... That meant it was now 9 am local time. Wednesday. The fixed point they were waiting for was scheduled for Friday around 11 am.

 

Maybe they would actually be able to do some sightseeing! Chicago was in Illinois, right? Maybe Donna could get to see the Navy Pier and the Grant Park and pop by the beach before she would face the crazy, almighty, bomb-planting alien she was supposed to be friends with.

 

Jack was underwhelmed by the sightseeing idea. “We’re not going to Chicago,” he explained from the passenger seat of the black Dodge Charger that had picked them up from the airport. This meant Donna had to sit next to the Master who was staring out of the window, grumbling to himself about the cumbersome speed of human transport.

 

“Where are we going then?”

 

“Joliet,” the Master said without turning away from the window.

 

“No, it’s Donna.”

 

He sighed, “Not Juliet. Joliet. It’s a city in Illinois.”

 

“Never heard of it,” Donna admitted.

 

Jack smiled, “well, go and ask the people there about Chiswick and they’d say the same. Important events in time don’t always happen at famous places.”

 

Donna’s eyes flickered over at the back of Milo’s head. If he was curious about what they were talking about, he didn’t show it. He just drove smoothly and silently on. Jack had introduced him as a friend so Donna assumed it safe to talk openly. “What’s gonna happen on Friday anyway? And how do we know it’s happening?”

 

Jack looked at the Master, clearly expecting him to answer the questions, but he seemed busy counting cars or something, so Jack explained, “Time Lords know about fixed points. According to the Master, Illinois is our next fixed point. It hasn’t happened yet, from our point of view, but from their perspective, Time Lords I mean, it’s happened ages ago. And it happens in the future. And it happens right now. It’s... well, the Doctor would say ‘timey-wimey’, I’ll just say it’s complicated, but that’s how they know about them. If we miss this one, we have to wait another two months and travel all the way to Japan.”

 

Donna didn’t say anything for a moment, she just followed the Master’s gaze until she couldn’t keep herself from asking any longer. “Look, no offense, but why do we trust him?” Finally the Master tore his gaze away from the street and looked at Donna with remote interest in his eyes. “He’s only here because you force him to stay, but how do we know he isn’t sending us to the wrong place to help his friend?”

 

“He is not my friend. Well, he is, but not the kind of friend you protect. More the kind you... want to see suffering a slow, painful death by your own hands,” the Master explained, clearly amused. “So, if he’s really gone off the rocker, I’m not going to miss that. Who knows? He might actually be fun to be around for a change. I might take him up on his offer to travel together for a bit...,” the Master let the sentence peter out with a dreamy smile.

 

“You are going to put his mind back together when we find him!” Jack ordered.

 

“’Course I will,” the Master shrugged. “One mentally instable Time Lord per TARDIS is enough. I just want to have a quick chat with our deranged friend and then I’ll put his mind back together. Of course _you_ believe that’ll do the trick and turn him back into the cuddly Time Lord you know.”

 

Jack frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

The Master shrugged. “Only that we don’t know in how far the missing part of his mind’s responsible for his change of hearts. Who knows what events actually caused it? And who says it’ll be all forgotten about, once he’s himself again?”

 

“He will be fine,” Jack said, so firmly that Donna momentarily wondered what kind of relationship Jack and the Doctor had. She was supposed to be his companion, the Master his old frenemy, and Jack? How clear was his ability to judge really?

 

Milo drove them farther down the motorway – or was this a highway? – and Donna couldn’t help but wonder how sane she was herself that she had agreed to accompanying two strangers on such a mission? It was imprudent and dangerous and for what? An adventure and the hope to do the right thing?

 

 _And didn’t you just miss it?!_ , the voice of the Doctor whispered excitedly and Donna couldn’t help but grin, infected by his devil-may-care attitude. She reckoned she should tell Jack that she could hear the Doctor. That the wall was thinner now, but she didn’t say a word for the rest of their drive to Joliet. Jack would only worry, or tell her off, or remind her how dangerous this was and Donna didn’t feel like having any of this. It hadn’t been her decision to temper with the wall and the damage was done anyway. Now they could only hope for the best.


	6. An Awful Lot of Waiting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor dreams and Donna tries to hold out until they reach the fixed point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N 1: Part of this chapter is set in Joliet, Illinois. I have never been to America myself only did my share of google research, so apologies to anyone familiar with the city for possible mistakes!
> 
> A/N 2: Anyone familiar with Demon Road by Derek Landy? Then you might like Jack’s American friend ;)

_Trigger warning: there will eb violence in this chapter. If you don't like blood, better skip to the part after the first "x-x-x-x-x", what you'll mis will not be crucial to the story, only add to the character of the Time Lord Victorious._

 

 

He dreamed of Pompeii.

 

“You all right there?”

 

“Oh, never better.”

 

Oh, he loved the sarcasm. It was her way of fighting even while facing terror and death.

 

“I like the toga.”

 

“Thank you. And the ropes?”

 

The dream kind of froze. No one was moving but the Doctor. Lucid dreaming could be lots of fun. First he erased the annoying soothsayer from the scene, then he took a moment to walk around Donna. She was tied to an altar, scared but hope had rekindled in her the moment he had stepped into the room.

 

_I used to be a source of hope._

 

He drank in the picture before him. A memory that used to fill him with no particular emotion. Except anger maybe. Yes... he had been angry at these women for hurting Donna.

 

_I still am. I’m angry, because I care about Donna._

 

But did he though? He knew he _used_ to, but right now at this moment? She was his best friend. He had loved her. Huh. That used to be harder to admit... Maybe because the feeling was gone now? He remembered it. How he enjoyed looking at her. Talking to her. Finding reasons to touch her. It seemed almost comical to him now. He must have been so bored that he had busied himself with the fantasy of being in love. Now he knew it was all just make-belief. He wasn’t able to love.

 

_I am._

 

True. He loved too much, maybe that was it. He loved every insignificant creature in this universe. That’s why he wanted to help them. He always had and he still did, only now his strategies were more effective. Donna was just one of those he intended to help. Assigning her a special place wouldn’t be fair. If he had to hurt her to save the others, how could he even consider refusing?

 

_I won’t hurt anyone! There’s got to be another way._

 

Yes. Slower ways. Ways that made failure possible. If you could save two people by hurting one, would you hesitate? If you could save ten by killing two, would you think twice? What if you knew the person you hurt, should it cloud your ability to judge?

 

The Doctor let the dream continue. Donna blinked. “Where did these nutters go?” she asked, craning her neck to look about the room, then her eyes found the Doctor. He had conjured the dagger he remembered one of the soothsayers holding. Lucid dreaming was _so much_ fun. And it could help him proving a point.

 

_No! No, not Donna. Please!_

 

The voice used to be so much louder, but it had faded over time. With every fixed point a little more. It was time it shut up for good.

 

“Spaceman? Would you mind?” Donna nodded her head towards the ropes that were holding her in place. The wonderful, naive woman thought he was going to slice the ropes. It actually brought a smile to the Doctor’s lips.

 

_No! Don’t you dare!! I am not like this! I am NOT!_

 

“Would you kill someone to save the universe?” the Doctor asked and a frown crawled over Donna’s face.

 

“I- Why are you asking something like that?”

 

“Just wondering,” the Doctor said casually and drew the dagger over Donna’s throat.

 

**_Nooooo!!_ **

 

Amazing how vivid dreams could be. He could even smell the blood and hear the gurgling sounds she made. All things his memory could provide, but he could only applaud his imagination for creating the betrayed look on Donna’s face.

 

“Because I would,” the Doctor told Donna, turned his back on her and left. He didn’t feel remorse or pity. He was ready to do the right thing, no matter what, but he was no sadist. For him there was no satisfaction in watching her dying, so why waste time? It was a matter of numbers. Give one to save billions and billions and billions. It didn’t take a genius like him to figure out what counted more.

 

x-x-x-x-x

 

Donna awoke with a start. She had tried her best to fight the jet lag and stay awake after Milo had dropped them off in front of a little house, which Jack claimed belonged to yet another friend of his. If this was the truth or just an euphemism for breaking into the house of a stranger, Donna hadn't dared to ask. Now that she could see Joliet's sky turn from pink to purple she knew she had succumbed to sleep after all. Not that she felt very refreshed.

 

She sat up on the sofa next to the window and rubbed her eyes. It was a nice apartment on the outskirts of a big city, not too busy but not boring. Shaun would have loved it here, but Donna found it difficult to think about an idyllic life with her fiancé while her whole body was shaking and her heart was drumming a tattoo against her ribcage. Only two days ago she would have blamed a forgotten about nightmare for these feelings, but now she knew better. She started to get a feeling for the difference between her own feelings and those second-hand emotions she got from the piece of the Doctor in her mind. And this agitation was not her own.

 

“You okay?” she asked in a hushed voice. She wasn’t sure where Jack and the Master were. The apartment wasn’t that large and she didn’t want them knowing about how much closer she was to the piece of the Doctor’s mind now. And how much closer to triggering a fatal memory.

 

_Sorry, bad dream._

 

“Do you even dream?”

 

 _Well... no. But_ he _does, and sometimes I can still feel my old self._

 

“So... how is the Doctor doing?” Donna asked. She got off the couch, God she needed some tea.

_Badly. He’s broken. Sick. And he doesn’t even know it... It feels like he’s given up._

 

Donna reckoned the piece of the Doctor spoke about the physical-Doctor like he was a different person to avoid confusion, but the sadness and fear in his voice told Donna he was well aware that it was him who they were talking about.

 

“But you haven’t given up, have you?” Donna said, trying to sound encouraging. She filled the kettle – if you could call this thing a kettle - and switched it on. “We’ll put you back together soon and then you can help fighting. You’ll be fine.”

 

_I hope you are right. I know I have to go back, but... I’m scared. This sick part is so much bigger than I am. It would have consumed me a long time ago if I hadn’t been separated from the rest and locked away in here._

 

After opening two wrong cupboards she found a mug inside of a kitchen drawer and some old tea bags on the counter. “Don’t be silly!” she said. “If you had been whole all along, it would never have come to this. Jack says so himself. Whatever happened to you, it only had this kind of effect, because your mind was already broken.”

_Maybe... But is putting me back together_ now _really a failsafe solution? What if the damage is already done?_

 

“Well, what other option is there?” Donna asked. She tried to push the feeling anxiety back, it wasn’t even her own emotion after all, but it was all the more difficult because underneath there were her own doubts and fears. “All we can do is try. Both of us! And we have to trust Jack and the Master to do their part.”

 

The kettle’s light went off and Donna automatically reached for it and poured the steaming water into her cup.

 

The Doctor didn’t answer, but Donna could feel his gloomy consent to what she had said. There was no other way, only hoping for the best.

 

She took the cup from the counter and clamped her hands around it. The warmth helped, if only a little.

 

Donna set out to have a look around the house. The kitchen, the bathroom and the two bedrooms, all were empty. The only thing she found was a note from Jack at the front door saying he had gone out to ‘check out their fixed point’. Donna frowned at the note. Now that she thought about it, neither Jack nor the Master had told her what exactly this fixed point would be. Something had to happen. Okay. But what? For all Donna knew it could be a huge catastrophe like the beginning of World War III or something as ordinary as a butterfly being eaten by the wrong cat.

 

Donna really hoped it was the butterfly.

 

With nothing else to do and not enough stamina left to go for a tour around the city, Donna took a long shower, put on her pyjamas, and claimed one of the bedrooms for herself. Let Jack and the Master fight over the second one, let them share it if they must. All Donna wanted was some peaceful sleep undisturbed by nightmares that weren’t her own.

 

x-x-x-x-x

 

When Donna woke the next morning, she found Jack with wet hair wolfing down some toast and eggs in the kitchen. It was a sight she could have done with more often. A feeling of guilt for staring at Jack while having Shaun wait for her at home crawled up on her, but Donna pushed it away and headed for the fridge. "Morning," she said, well aware that it was already close to noon.

 

“Morning,” Jack munched and managed to smile without letting too much toast drop out of his mouth. “See you.”

 

“Where’re you going?”

 

“The Master and I are taking turns guarding the fixed point, just in case the Doctor shows up earlier than we expect, and it’s almost my turn.”

 

“Right... when’s my turn?”

 

Jack wiped the last crumbles from his chin. “You don’t have one. Look we’re not trying to patronise you, it’s just-“

 

“You think I couldn’t stop him if he showed up during my shift.”

 

“No! No, really, it’s just that you’re important for this mission Donna. You’re the one carrying the piece of the Doctor after all. If he shows up with just one of us on site, this person risks getting k-... seriously hurt. Neither I nor the Master thinks us more skilled to stop the Doctor, it’s just that we’re expandable while you’re not.”

 

Donna frowned. If she wasn’t mistaken, the Master was just as crucial to this operation as she was. He was the one who could put the Doctor back together after all. She held Jack’s gaze and swallowed the bunch of arguments that had started building up back down. He was patronising her, but could she blame him? Alone up against the Doctor she would stand about as much chance to survive as a dedicated duck. And if she screwed up, they wouldn’t be able to save the Doctor.

 

“If you say so. Just take care, will you?” she said instead.

 

Jack’s smile widened. “Don’t I always?” He shrugged on his coat and was half-way out of the house when he stopped and turned back to Donna. “Oh, and do me a favour. Don’t go wandering about the city. In case the Doctor shows up, we need you ready on call, okay? Okay! Brilliant! See you.”

 

And he was gone and left Donna glaring angrily at the closed door. Fantastic, now she was trapped in a little apartment with nothing to do. Her first time in America and so far she’d seen the interior of an airport, a car and an apartment.

 

Grumpily she reminded herself that this had never been meant to be a holiday, but it wasn’t like she was allowed to do any work either!

 

Breakfast and another stroll through the apartment later, Donna’s Sherlock-senses had told her that the owner of this apartment didn’t read a lot, had no interesting pictures or pets and that his fridge could do with a refill. She ended up in front of the telly watching some American shows which weren’t too thrilling as those were being broadcasted everywhere around the globe all the time anyway. Halfway through a rerun of _Scrubs_ the door opened and the Master came in, foaming.

 

Jack must have shared Donna’s opinion that they needed more food and had made the worst decision possible. He had sent the Master grocery shopping. He came in, banged the door shut, slammed the bags down on the table, all the time cursing to himself in a foreign language. Donna wondered if it might be Latin... or was it French? No, it definitely sounded alien. She only knew he was swearing because of the sour look on his face.

 

He didn’t even spare Donna a look, which she assumed was for her best. He just stormed upstairs to either take a shower or a nap until his next shift was due.

 

“Great,” Donna muttered, almost as testily as the Master. “The men are out doing the exciting, dangerous stuff and I’m stuck here, putting away the groceries.”

 

 _Hey, so am I_. The Doctor tried to cheer her up, but Donna mentally slammed the door in his face. She didn’t want his sympathy, she wanted to get out and _do_ something. The waiting drove her mad, she knew something really bad was about to happen, but there was no way to make it happen faster and get over with it and that drove her nuts. She didn’t even know what this bad thing _was_.

 

Having shoved the groceries angrily into the fridge and cupboards, Donna gave up on trying to watch TV and sat down back on her spot on the sofa near the window. From here she could see the cars and people passing by, going either into or out of the city. She wondered what they would be looking like tomorrow at this time. Would everything be the same? Would they be grocery shopping and watching _Scrubs_ or would the news be on, talking about a horrific catastrophe? Would there be any people left to watch the news or would Joliet get wiped out in some freak accident? Joliet, Chernobyl, Pompeii... Donna felt like she’d missed a step on the stairs. She had to hold on to the sofa so she wouldn’t fall off.

 

The room was spinning and tilting and Donna felt sick, suddenly stuck on a rollercoaster she couldn’t remember getting on.

 

_Don’t get clever in Latin._

_TARDIS. Time Lord. Yeah!_

_Donna. Human. No!_

_I am... Spartacus._

_Don't go to the beach, it's not safe! Listen to me...!_

_Come on!_

_Just_ someone. _Please. Not the whole town. Just save someone._

„Hey! Hey, what’s wrong?!“ Donna had slipped off of the couch and somehow landed on the ground. She heard more alien swearing and then someone seized her shoulders and shook her, roughly. With her eyes screwed shut, Donna blindly tried to batter the hands away, but they were stronger. “Get a grip!” it was the Master who spoke to her and the fact that he actually sounded worried snapped Donna out of her stupor depite the pain in her head that lingered. “Did you remember? Is the piece of the Doctor still there?!”

 

Oh, _that_ was what he was worried about. Of course, not about this stupid human. Donna pushed his hands away and this time the Master let go of her but kept his eyes fixed on her. “He’s fine,” Donna mumbled after checking mentally if the presence was still there. “I only remembered snippets.”

 

The concern on the Master’s face gave way to anger. “Well, try not to remember then! We need both parts of the Doctor to make this work.”

 

“Yeah, thanks for the info,” Donna retorted and stood up. She was groggy on her legs but they carried her weight and she managed to leave the room without collapsing again. She didn’t need to talk to the Doctor to know the wall was constantly growing thinner. Jack had said that they’d have to wait two months for the next fixed point, if they missed this one. Well, the good news was that Donna wouldn’t have to wait. Either she got rid of the Doctor’s mind tomorrow or her mind would burn itself up. If she made it that long anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry for taking entirely too long to update. What can I tell you except that I'm working part-time and studying full-time? Life is busy, but I haven't abandoned this story. I hope neither have you :)


	7. A Fixed Point in Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our friends meet the Time Lord Victorious at last. Then someone dies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You cannot imagine how long I've been working on this stupid *#!?+ chapter. It's far from perfect, but it can stay like this. As an apology for the awfully long delay between chapters lately, this one is pretty long. (Is that even a good thing? I don't know anymore~)
> 
> The latest reunion of TaTennant has given me the spur of motivation to continue *_* Gosh, those two are just perfect!

After regaining this rather confusing fragment of her memory, Donna tried to avoid anything that might trigger another one. As this meant trying to think as little as possible, she switched the little TV in her room on and changed channels until she found some DIY-shows. Build your own kitchen, pool, death-ray, whatever it was, Donna paid as little attention to it as possible. Sometimes the Doctor tried to talk to her. He made a joke or asked a question, but Donna ignored him. Right now her only purpose was to be a container for the Doctor. She wouldn’t forgive herself if she messed this up just because she was bored.

 

When sleep finally came to her, Donna gladly accepted it. She slept until the alarm clock on her phone woke her up the next morning, undisturbed by alien dreams in her head.

 

She had planned in lots of extra time. So by the time she was dressed and ready, the Master only just got up. They didn’t talk much. Donna’s question as to what the fix point _was_ exactly got answered by the Master grumbling something about seeing for herself soon enough into his cereal. So when Milo finally rang the door bell, both of them left the apartment without much ado.

 

As they drove in silence, Donna eyed the Master suspiciously. He was tapping various buttons on the radio, apparently trying to drive Milo crazy. Milo didn’t react though. Milo hadn’t reacted at all since he had picked them up from the airport. He seemed distant to the point of complete emotional detachment. Donna wondered how someone like Milo became friends with someone like Jack. Still… though Milo hadn’t said a single word since Donna had met him, it was the Master with his almost child-like behaviour who scared Donna.

 

Jack had told her the Master was in on the mission, because... well, because Jack forced him to. He had given Donna a brief summary of what the Master had done to deserve being locked away. Since the Master hadn’t denied any of the crimes Jack had accused him of – quite the contrary he had occasionally added a detail here and there – Donna had no reason to doubt the Master’s vile nature.

 

Of course Jack could have lied, forced the Master to play along. The longer Donna spent in this twilight-land of being given a rough summary of her past and not actually remembering herself, doubting everything and everyone seemed inevitable. The constant paranoia would drive her mad if she let it, so she decided to trust her gut for now. And her gut told her that Jack was utterly mad, but a good guy. The Master seemed equally mad, but good? Not so much.

 

So that left Donna with one pressing question. Why didn’t the Master leg it while Jack was away to guard the fix point? As far as Donna could see, Milo didn’t carry a gun on him and she most certainly didn’t. So what was it that kept the Master in check? Was the Doctor’s fate important to him after all, or did he and Jack have an agreement? Some kind of deal that went beyond the ‘help us or I’ll shoot you’ Donna knew about?

 

“There we are,” the Master said, either oblivious to Donna’s looks or purposefully ignoring them. They had stopped on a crowded road full of shopping people and honking cars. The Master got out of the car and already closed the door while Donna was still hurrying to unfasten her seatbelt.

 

“Thanks,” she said and she could have sworn Milo gave the smallest of nods. Then she scrambled out of the car and stumbled straight into a crowd of pedestrians. She apologised while pushing her way through the crowd. After a second in which she couldn’t see the Master and her chest feeling much too tight for her heart, she spotted the ruffled blond man in the crowd and trailed after him.

 

This part of Joliet looked much different than the district where they were staying. Besides being much more crowded, the buildings here were taller, decorated with more flags and ornaments. The smell of expensive perfume, sweet pastries and car fumes reminded Donna of going to London early in the morning for a shopping trip.

 

Stunned by all these new impressions, she just so managed to follow the Master through the thickest part of the crowd. Unlike her, there was something about him that made the crowd part before him, leaving his way open. Donna had just recovered from a tall bloke running right into her without so much as acknowledging her presence, when she spotted where she and the Master were headed.

 

On the other side of the street, Jack waited for them next to the main entrance of a tall, white building. Donna’s gaze drifted upwards as she came to a stop next to the Master. They were standing in front of a hotel, but even the size of it told Donna that it was not the kind of hotel where people like her were given a room. It was at least six stories high, with tall windows, adorned with detailed plastering. The large glass doors were lined with brass and above them a balcony, the size of the Nobles’ living room, loomed over the side walk. Jack, the Master and Donna were standing in the shadow of this balcony and tried not to stand in the way of busy page boys carrying around pieces of luggage the size of their own bodies.

 

“You seen him, yet?” the Master asked.

 

Jack shook his head. Donna noticed that he was looking tired and his hair was ruffled. Not his usual, carefully aimed at scruffy-yet-charming look, just ruffled.

 

“Not yet, but he can’t be too far away now. As long as you didn’t set us up that is,” Jack added and the Master smiled. It was a nasty smile.

 

“You don’t trust me? That hurts, captain. It really does.” The two of them looked at each other for a while, Jack’s cold stare against the Master’s vile smirk. In the end it was Jack who had more pull with his gun on the ready and, as Donna assumed, all kinds of deals he had offered the Master for his cooperation, and the Master shrugged.

 

“He _is_ around. No idea which state he’s gonna be in though.”

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jack asked.

 

“Just that you asked me where the _next_ fix point is the Doctor’s gonna be at. The next fix point is this one. Just, as you know, freak, the order in which the Doctor can visit them is random.”

Donna wasn’t sure she understood, but the way Jack paled didn’t look good at all.

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she wanted to know.

 

For once, the Master seemed to enjoy explaining something, even if he did it with enough scorn that Donna had no doubt he thought her very thick for even asking. “The Doctor’s a time traveller. The next fixed point for you is not the next for him. For all we know his ship’s jumping around even more randomly than usual. No clue why, his TARDIS has always been faulty. Maybe she decided she doesn’t like what he’s trying to do. She can’t disobey him point-blank, but she can act up a little. Take him to minor fixed points first, before he gets to destroy the vital ones. The point is, last time the freak here,” he nodded at Jack, “met our friend, he was in a pretty bad shape. The meeting has been maybe a week ago for him, but for the Doctor?” The Master let out whistle. “Could be months. Could be years. We’ll have to find out.”

 

Before Donna’s brain had managed to process every detail of what the Master had said, Jack lunged at him. He seized the Master’s collar and pulled him closer. Instinctively, Donna looked around for anyone to see. “Jack!” she hissed. The last thing they needed right now was that Jack got arrested.

 

“We had a deal,” Jack growled.

 

The Master didn’t fight, but he turned his face slightly away from Jack as if the proximity appalled him. “And we still do, _freak_ ,” the Master spat the last word out. “I brought you to a place the Doctor’s gonna show up at. There was no way knowing which point the Doctor in his bitchy ship would end up _next_. All I could give you was a fix point near you, and here you go.”

Jack glared at the Master but finally released him.

 

“You’d better make sure this plan works.”

 

The Master brushed imaginary lint from his collar. “Sure.”

 

Donna stepped in, before either of them could loose it again. “Could somebody please explain to me, what our plan _is_? We’re waiting for the Doctor at this fixed point, I get it, but what is the point anyway?” From the way the Master smiled and Jack dodged her look, Donna gathered the fixed point involved more than the right butterfly.

 

“There is an elevator in this hotel. It’s not particularly old, or cheap or anything. It’s just gonna malfunction. In ten minutes a man will take this elevator to the top floor. The elevator and the man will reach said floor. The doors won’t open, the man will panic, but before he can even call for help, he and the elevator will crash all the way down to the basement. The man dies, along with him whoever happens to be in the elevator with him.”

 

Donna’s insides felt like lead. Just a moment ago she had felt almost excited about getting a real prediction of the future. Not from some cheap fortune teller, but someone who actually _knew_. Now she did know and she already regretted having asked. Sure, this was no atomic power plant blowing up, but it was a human life. A human alive right _now_ and in ten minutes he would be dead. It would be so simple to prevent that.

 

Donna hugged herself against the cold. Suddenly she missed Chiswick. It was cold there too, but it was a cold she was familiar with. Joliet suddenly felt too far away from home, too alien.

 

“Why’s it so important it happens?” Donna tried to sound as neutral about the question as she could, but she could read in the Master’s and Jack’s faces that they knew why she was asking.

 

“The man who dies in the elevator is a renowned biologist. As far as we know, in fifty years his research will lead to a virus being modified. This virus will wipe out 94% of human life on earth.”

 

“No help will come from space,” the Master added, considerably more cheerful than Jack. “Earth will be made a quarantine zone and depending on the decision some bureaucrats make, it will either be left to itself until the virus has wiped itself out or the entire planet will be blown up to spare humankind some of the misery.”

 

“But there has to be another way than just letting him die! If we just talked to-“

 

The Master shook his head. “Told you she wouldn’t get it,” he said, addressing Jack before rounding on Donna again. “It’s a fixed point for a reason! Our bioterrorist in the making has to die today in this elevator. In every time line. No ifs or buts or loop-holes. Every other option will somehow lead to some nice little mutants roaming this planet in fifty years time. Either that biological genius has already published his findings, or his death will inspire a younger, more skilled biologist, or he’s already produced some samples. Choose whatever option appeals to you, but it always ends with a catastrophe. Either you accept that or you go and join the Doctor.”

 

Donna turned to Jack for help but there was no comfort to be found on his face. “I’m sorry, but he’s right. Fixed points are nasty and painful, but they are necessary. There’s nothing we can do for the man, if we don’t want many more people to suffer and die eventually. It’s just the way things are. We’re not the bad guys in this story.”

 

“We’re not the good guys either,” Donna mumbled. She avoided Jack’s look and let her eyes wander of the mass of people streaming in and out of shops. “What is his name anyway?” She asked. “We can’t just call him ‘the biologist’.”

 

“Why not? I went to school with a Time Lord who called himself that,” the Master said.

 

“His name is Avery Wilks,” Jack said, ignoring the Master. “He has a wife and a son with him. Listen Donna, we get to do some rescuing today, okay? We make sure no-one but Mr Wilks has to die today.”

 

Donna nodded, but kept her eyes on her shoes. It was pointless and childish but she felt disappointed in Jack. She had hoped he was the kind of bloke to charge into a situation and make everything turn out okay no matter the odds. She had thought him a hero, she realised. And she had thought she could be heroic with him. So far she had only sat around and tried not to die, and she hadn’t even been particularly good at that. And now that she could be active, they expected her to let an innocent man die.

 

It wasn’t Jack’s fault, but in this moment Donna hated him. And the Master. And even herself for not insisting more that they told her what they were about to do, before hopping on that plane to Joliet. The only person she suddenly felt less angry about was the man they were here to catch to stop him from doing what Donna wanted to do so badly, save people.

 

Jack cleared his throat, trying to steer the conversation back into safer realms. “So, the Doctor should show up any minute now. We know he isn’t going to try and stop Mr Wilks on his way here, because we’re in constant contact with a friend of mine who keeps an eye on the biologist. We’re not letting the Doctor destroy this planet.”

 

“But I don’t get it,” Donna said, feeling like this had become her catchphrase over the last few days. “Doesn’t he know that saving Mr Wilks will lead to an even bigger catastrophe?”

 

“He does,” Jack agreed. “He just doesn’t care. Or rather, he believes he’ll be able to stop that catastrophe when it comes to it.”

 

“ _Can_ he stop it?” Donna asked, unable to keep a spark of hope out of her voice.

 

“Sure,” the Master shrugged. “It’s unlikely, but he’s good with unlikely stuff. Problem is, solve that problem and two bigger ones will pop up. That’s the nasty thing about fixed points. Stop bad and it comes to worse. Stop worse and it comes to worst. Stop that and... well, for all we know the Doctor might blow up the universe in a year or two.”

 

“I know how you feel,” Jack said and when Donna looked at him, she was surprised to see her own feelings mirroring back at her. Sadness and regret about having to sacrifice a human life. “Usually it’s different. We save everyone we can and we face the consequences when they come up, but fixed points... They are like dominos. Knock over one and the outcome will inevitably be bad and then worse and worse. That’s why they are fixed points. Tragedies that prevent bigger ones.”

 

Donna swallowed thickly. “How many dominos has the Doctor knock over then?”

 

“Now she’s starting to ask the right questions,” the Master said.

 

“Once he’s back in his right mind he can go and fix the fixed points he’s tried to fix... Err, he can go and fix stuff. Let’s focus on what we have to do right now,” Jack explained.

 

Donna nodded. “Make sure an innocent man walks into his certain death.”

 

“Let’s call it: Doing the right thing by making sure he gets into that elevator,” Jack offered.

 

“And catching the Doctor while we’re at it,” the Master reminded them. His boredom and irritation had given way to agitation. He seemed almost excited. Who was Donna trying to fool? He _was_ excited. What did he care about all those lives?

 

_Jack’s right. It is the right thing._

 

_Yeah_ , Donna thought, _tell that to the family that’s about to be torn apart. S_ he knew Jack and the Master were right. She just didn’t like it very much.

 

And then, just when Donna started coming to terms with tings, they appeared. A man in his early forties, sandy-hair that could have done with a cut, a black-haired woman next to him, holding onto the hand of a boy about the age of five. The man was carrying a black leather briefcase. He wasn’t paying attention to either his wife or his son, instead he seemed absorbed in a chat with a young man wearing a brown coat and ridiculous hair.

 

Donna might not have noticed Mr Wilks if it hadn’t been for the man next to him. The man Donna had seen before. In her head.

The Doctor looked up as if he had noticed he was being watched. He spotted Jack and the Master and then Donna. His brown eyes flickered over to her and Donna’s world lurched. A fireball must have exploded behind her eyes because the next thing Donna was aware of was pain. This was more than a headache. The feeling was excruciating, as if something was forcefully trying to escape her skull. Donna heard her own scream from far away and the last thing she was aware of, were her knees scraping over the pavement as she fell. And then there was nothing.

 

x-x-x-x-x

 

Donna awoke to the Doctor’s voice urgently echoing through her head. _Get up! Donna, get up now!!_

 

But she didn’t want to get up. The pain in her head was a constant, agonizing throbbing and she feared that it would only get worse the second she opened her eyes and looked at the Doctor again.

_It won’t. I promise, it won’t. Just get up. Donna, if you don’t get up now, the whole mission will fail. Get UP!_

 

A stir went through Donna and she sat up, her eyes snapping open. She had a split second to wondered if her body had listened to her own decision to get up or the Doctor’s, then her surroundings swam into focus and she had more important things to deal with.

 

There were people standing around her and a woman was kneeling in front of her. It took Donna a moment to recognize Mrs Wilks.

 

“You should probably take her to a hospital.” It was the voice of the Doctor again, but not in her head. It was odd to hear the voice coming from the outside for a change. Donna didn’t dare look at him, instead she looked at Mrs Wilks and the little boy who was peering at her, curiously. The boy who was about to lose his father.

 

„As I said, it’s chronic. My sister has that sometimes. It's unfortunate, but nothing to worry about.“ Donna glanced up, because she had never heard the Master sounding so _human_. It was unsettling. He was talking to Mr Wilks, but it wasn't Mr Wilks who answered.

 

„Doesn't look like nothing to me.“ Instinctively, Donna’s eyes flickered over to the Doctor. Looking at him hurt, it felt as if he was too bright, but Donna didn’t look away again. This was him. The mad alien, her best friend, and maybe the key to her memories.

 

“Maybe we should call an ambulance. Just in case,” Mr Wilks offered and Donna didn't need the piece of the Doctor in her mind nudging her painfully to know if Mr Wilks left now, the fixed point would be destroyed and she along with it.

 

“No, it's fine,” she said and pushed herself off the ground. She was grateful Jack appeared at her side, propping her up. The world was still swaying dangerously around her. “It's a genetic thing. My aunt's sister had it too. Used to tell us it is great at parties to get all the attention.” Donna laughed the fake laugh her mum used at family reunions and Jack and the Master joined right in, as if this was a running-gag well known to them. Some of the bystanders smiled good-naturedly, no-one suspected that Jack and the Master had been at each others' throats moments ago or that bringing Donna into a hospital could have saved Mr Wilks' life and ultimately, ended all of their lives.

 

“Right then. I think we'll be off. We've had a long day and I'm sure Tyler can't wait to see our room. Did I mention it's all the way up on the highest floor?” Mr Wilks said and smiled at his son. Tyler's attention instantly left Donna and returned to his father.

 

“Up there?” Tyler pointed at the tip of the hotel and his mother sniggered. Even she seemed convinced that Donna would be all right without medical attention.

 

“Let's find out,” she grinned and Tyler squealed. He let go of his mother's hand and ran for the hotel door.

 

“Wait!”

 

Donna and the Doctor looked at each other and for a second the feeling of déjà-vu was so strong that neither of them could speak. Both of them had called for the boy, both of them had come here to save lives. Donna to safe at least the boy and his mother, the Doctor to save his father as well. Ultimately killing them all.

 

Killing them all.

 

Donna grasped that thought and held on to it, so the feeling of nostalgia didn't overwhelm her. The Doctor was her enemy and she had to treat him as such. The fact that he looked at her like he barely managed to refrain from hugging her didn't exactly help.

 

“Donna. You have no idea what you've gotten yourself into,” he said. Being directly addressed by him made this all the more real and sent another wave of pain through her skull. Donna ignored it.

 

“I know everything, Doctor. About the fixed points and you and everything else.”

 

Donna had expected him to sneer, or to frown, but certainly not to give her such a warm smile. “Of course you do. You’d make them tell you everything until you rush into anything. But you don’t remember.”

 

“H-how can you be so sure?” she asked.

 

“Because you called me ‘Doctor’.” Donna didn’t understand but the Doctor didn’t bother to explain, instead he said, “also, if you would remember me, you would know I’d never consider hurting anybody who’s innocent, except if it was necessary.”

 

“The real Doctor would never hurt anybody, no matter what,” Jack objected. “He finds another way. He shows _mercy_!”

 

The warmth in his eyes when he’d been talking to Donna was snuffed out by Jack’s word. “I’ve been merciful for so long, Jack. Patient and naive and merciful. Those times are over. Leave. This is your final warning.”

 

“Wonderful,” the Master breathed with awe in his voice that made Donna’s skin crawl. “Look at yourself, you’re wonderful. Completely insane, of course, but _glorious_.”

 

“Don’t talk to me,” the Doctor said, an icy edge to his voice. “Once again back to life, eh? Yes, you’re good at that, you’re almost like a Dalek, only that Dalek’s aren’t cowards.”

 

The admiration on the Master’s face turned sour. “Say that again, you headcase.”

 

“Coward,” the Doctor repeated. “How easy was it to flee from the Time War? How cosy to live as a human while I had to kill and torture?” Where cold detachment had been a moment before, rage was now on the Doctor’s face. “You’re one of those people I showed mercy to too many times. High time I corrected that mistake.”

 

“You wouldn’t kill m-,” the Master started, but the Doctor already pulled his hand out of his pocket - When had he put his hand in there? - and whipped out a gun. The explosion was loud, louder than Donna had expected it to be from what she knew from TV. She shrieked and covered her head with her arms. Along with her, other people started screaming.

 

_Move!_ The Doctor’s voice in her head shouted and snapped Donna out of her stupor. She lowered her arms and found the Master on the ground next to her, cursing and growling while he was clutching his shoulder, blood pumping through his fingers. A little bit further away Jack had tackled the Doctor to the ground. The people around them running away, some ran into the hotel for cover, blocking the way between Donna and the Wilks family.

 

Donna’s first instinct was to go and help the Master. Not because she particularly liked him, but because he was the one with the most obvious wound. _He’ll be fine, the fixed point! Make sure Avery Wilks gets into that elevator!_

 

With her head pounding and her stomach in a knot, Donna turned her back to Jack and the Master and pushed her way through the crowd. If the many seasonal sales in her lifehad prepared her for anything, it was this moment. She managed to worm her way through the pushing people and found herself in the foyer of the hotel. She stopped and scanned her surroundings. More people pushed inside and forced their way past Donna. She was pushed out of the way and almost fell the the ground when she spotted him. Mr and Mrs Wilks had been separated. Mrs Wilks was somewhere near the reception trapped in a crowed of panicking people, Tyler on her arm, while her husband was making his way over to the stairs.

 

Donna pushed on and reached Mr Wilks before he could escape. She grabbed his arm. “Don't take the stairs!”

 

He turned around to her and pulled his arm away. Then his expression cleared as he recognized her as the woman from before. “There's been a shooting. I need to find my son and wife!”

 

Donna's insides were made of hot lead, she could feel it. “That's why I'm telling you not to take the stairs. I saw Tyler at the elevator- err, the lift. I think he lost his mum.” It didn't feel like she was the one talking. She felt detached from those words while her heart was drumming a tattoo against her ribcage. She hoped Mr Wilks was too worried to see through her lie.

 

Luckily, his face paled. “The lift?”

 

Donna nodded and pointed at the elevators. They were abandoned. Apparently no-one wanted to be caught in one of those while there was a shooting outside. “I think he wanted to go to the top floor. Where you said your room is, remember?”

 

Mr Wilks cursed and turned to the elevators. He didn't waste time by replying, he was determined to find his son in this turmoil and Donna watched him go to his death. He reached the elevator and pummelled the button, all the way looking around, maybe hoping to spot his son still in the foyer, and a part of Donna wished he would see Tyler and his mother further in the back.

 

The elevator doors opened and Mr Wilks entered. He hadn't seen his family and his family hadn't seen him. Donna felt a hot and a cold shudder running down her back as she scanned her memory for the last words the Wilks' had exchanged. She couldn't remember and she doubted someone else could. They hadn't been meaningful, they weren't good-byes. And now she had killed that man.

 

Her eyes were burning and her body was trembling.

 

_Donna, that’s not tr-_

 

She blocked the Doctor’s voice out, she didn’t want to hear any of this. Days ago she had just been a temp in Chiswick, a granddaughter and a daughter and a fiancé and now she was a murderer.

 

Donna watched Mr Wilks vanish behind the closing doors and then turned away, suddenly afraid. She didn't want to be here when the elevator came crushing back down, she didn't want to _hear_. Now with panic of her own rising in her, Donna started pushing her way back out of the hotel entrance and towards the place where she had lost Jack and the Master when someone grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the crowd.

 

It wasn't Jack and it wasn't the Master.

 

“What have you done?!” the Doctor hollered. He seemed to have beaten Jack, even though Jack must have split his lip and given him that nasty bruise under his right eye. Still, his eyes were ablaze with burning fury and a gun in his hand.

 

“I had to!” she sobbed, her voice verged on histerical. “I don’t care if you hurt me, but I had to do it!”

 

The Doctor slowly raised his gun, his hand digging into Donna’s arm, but she didn’t flinch. “You are not an evil person, Donna Noble, you made a mistake because of those two,” he didn’t have to point at Jack or the Master to make Donna understand who he was talking about. “But I have run out of mercy. You get this one last chance from me. Leave and never come back. The next mistake will be your last.”

 

They glared at each other for a moment longer, then the Doctor let go of her and crossed the street. He vanished in the crowd of people who didn’t even recognize him as the one who had fired the shot.

 

They had won this round. Avery Wilks would die, the Doctor was gone, the Master shot, Jack was gone and Donna shaken to the core by the sudden realisation what she had done. What a victory.

 

She glared at the place where the Doctor had vanished. This was no longer a nice little adventure, this wasn’t even about saving the universe, this had just become personal. She wouldn’t allow that Avery Wilks had died in vain.

 

With screeching tires, the black Dodge Charger turned a corner and came to an abrupt stop in front of the hotel. “In there!” Jack snapped. He came from behind Donna, the Master by his side. The Time Lord was pale, but other wise seemed to be okay. Jack himself was pressing his arm against his chest as if several ribs were bruised and his face was covered in bruises. Donna found herself wishing her own pain would be visible from the outside. A nasty scar somewhere obvious that marked her as a murderer. No, even more she wished she had stayed outside and fought the Doctor and someone else had lured Mr Wilks into that elevator.

 

With shaky legs, Donna let herself drop into Milo’s car. In a foursome they drove down Joliet’s streets. “You know where he is?” Jack asked Milo.

 

Milo nodded. “Spotted the blue box in a little alley not far away. I’m taking you there.”

 

“Step on it! He mustn’t escape,” Jack growled. “Master, you okay?” The Master grumbled a ‘yes’ and inspected his shoulder. He had to be an alien, because Donna could see the wound already healing. “Good. It will certainly come to a fight. Donna, you okay?”

 

Donna didn’t know how to answer that. ‘Okay’ seemed the wrong word to describe how she was feeling, but different from Jack and the Master, she felt as if she deserved the pain. “Yeah.”

 

Jack nodded. “Okay, our plan doesn’t change. We’ve won back there, Donna. I know it doesn’t feel like it, but we did.” Donna just nodded so Jack would keep on talking. She didn’t feel like discussing what she had just done. Not yet. “We’re going into the TARDIS and we’re putting the Doctor back together and I don’t care if we have to sedate or hog-tie him for that.”

 

“It’s for the best. He’s in pain, I could feel it. We might be able to convince him to let us do it. If not... well, leave the sedation to me,” the Master said with a malicious edge to his voice as he rubbed his sore shoulder.

 

Jack nodded. “Just knock him out. Nothing else. He’s not himself, or he wouldn’t have shot you, remember? Good. Donna, it’ll be your job to convince the Doctor. If someone can do it, it’s you. Did you see how he looked at you back there? He’s your friend, he won’t want to hurt you.”

 

“Yes, he will,” Donna said. “After he’s seen what I did to... to the fixed point, he almost shot me.”

 

“Almost. That’s the key word. He hurt me and the Master without us doing anything, but you’re special. I know this is dangerous and I’m asking a lot of you, but you’re our only hope. Do you think you can try getting through to him?”

 

Donna nodded. The shock of what she had done slowly wore off and left her feeling oddly numb.

 

“You still have that gun?” the Master asked Jack.

 

“No, the Doctor took it. And that was already my spare one, he took the first from me when he came to visit our headquarters.”

 

The Master sighed, “perfect. So this time we’re not even armed.”

 

“No, but at least there are no innocent people around to be hurt,” Jack reminded him. “Besides, what good would shooting him do? He’d only regenerate and that might destroy our hope of putting his mind back together.”

 

The Master shrugged. “Never said I’d want to shoot him dead. Only that I want to blast a hole in his shoulder to see how _he_ likes it.”


	8. Back in the TARDIS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our friends are back in the TARDIS, the Doctor isn't happy with this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be violence in this chapter. Nothing too graphic, but please don't read if this isn't your cup of tea at all.

They arrived in a small alley just as Milo had promised. Without speaking to each other they left the car and made their way over to the blue police box. At the sight of it, Donna’s headache flared up again. She pressed the heel of her hand against her temple, but continued walking.

 

The TARDIS’ door was locked. The Master crouched down in front of it and Donna couldn’t see what he was doing to that lock, but a moment later the door clicked open and they entered the space ship.

 

The TARDIS looked exactly like the image the piece of the Doctor had created in Donna’s mind. Only that the reality was even bigger, even more overwhelmingly gorgeous, and bloody freezing. Someone seemed to have forgotten to switch the heating on. At the control panel in the middle of it all stood the Doctor. He looked slightly surprised but not particularly shocked about their appearance.

 

“You should not have come,” he said. He flicked a lever and the door behind them slammed shut. Blocking out the sunlight. With her ancient engines humming in their ears, the TARDIS awoke and shuddered. Donna couldn’t remember how the TARDIS worked exactly, but she knew that now they were truly trapped in the Doctor’s realm, and he was pissed.

 

“We had to,” Jack replied, unimpressed by the Doctor’s welcome. “Despite everything, you’re our friend and we want to help you.”

 

“I don’t need help.”

 

“Yes, you do. Look at yourself. Destroying fixed points no matter the consequences, shooting innocent people- even your friends! What have you become?”

 

The Doctor stepped around the control panel and faced them, unflinching. “I am the last of the Time Lords, not counting this traitor over there, which I don’t,” he nodded towards the Master who’s face became a grimace of anger. “I am the winner of the Time War. The Time Lord Victorious.”

 

“The _winner_? What kind of bullshit is that? You used to feel remorse over people dying, remember ‘remorse’?”

 

In the blink of an eye, the Doctor had closed up on Jack. He seized his collar and slammed Jack into the nearest wall. The sudden outburst of violence shook Donna out of her numbness. It broke through her thoughts of Avery Wilks and made her realise that she _was_ scared. She didn’t want to die or get hurt. No matter what happened, no matter the overall gain, she wanted to live. “I felt so much remorse for so much time. So many wasted years. And you want me to go back to that? Fine friend you are,” the Doctor said. His hand closed around Jack’s throat and he squeezed.

 

“Stop it!” Donna exclaimed.

 

The Doctor’s eyes flickered over to her before he turned on Jack again. The short moment had been enough though. Donna felt a pang of hot pain piercing her skull once more. How was she supposed to fight the Doctor when all it took was seeing his face to almost kill her?

 

“And you pulled Donna into all this,” the Doctor growled, his face close to Jack’s. “You’re risking her life. I gave you clear instructions concerning her protection and you disobeyed them!”

 

“Listen to yourself,” Jack croaked. “’Disobeyed’. Next thing you want is that we call you Master.”

 

With inhuman strength the Doctor lifted Jack up by the neck and Donna took a step back. She had never seen so much brute force up close, at least she couldn’t remember ever seeing anything like this. But now Jack, the handsome, strong Jack, was dangling inches over the ground, struggling desperately for air. “Don’t compare me to this piece of scum, who abandoned his own people because he was too scared to fight!”

 

“You think I fear a fight?” the Master snarled and lunged at the Doctor, knocking both him and Jack sideways. Gasping and couching, Jack collapsed on the ground. Donna hurried over to him and knelt beside him. Horrified, she watched how the two Time Lords fought. It was nothing like a fight between humans. They were incredibly fast, and brutally precise in their attacks.

 

The Master had had the element of surprise on his side and managed to pin the Doctor to the ground beneath him. He punched him in the face, but Donna soon realised that he didn’t stand a chance against the Doctor. His shoulder was bruised and that was the exact spot the Doctor attacked. The Master cried out and the Doctor pushed the other Time Lord off of himself with the air of someone who was trained for combat.

 

“He told me he fought in the Time War, but somehow I never thought of him as... a soldier,” Jack said hoarsely.

As if to prove Jack right, the Doctor brought enough distance between himself and the Master to pull out the gun with one fluid motion. With blood dripping from his mouth at the point where the Master had hit him, the Doctor trained the muzzle on the Master’s eye. “Pathetic. No wonder you ran away. You wouldn’t have lasted a day on a battleground. You just can’t fight.”

 

“Oh, I can,” the Master sneered. “I just prefer to fight dirty.” He dug his hand into his pocket and produced a slender metal tube from his pocket. Its tip glowed red and he fired it at the Doctor’s hand holding the gun. He yelped and dropped the weapon, clutching his hand as he stumbled backwards. Donna could see angry burn marks forming on his skin.

 

“Coward!” the Doctor spat.

 

“Guilty as charged,” the Master replied and fired again and again, burning the Doctor’s chest and neck. The Master laughed, “not so funny anymore when you’re the one getting hurt, is it?”

 

“Stop that!” Donna shouted again, this time addressing the Master. “We didn’t come here to fight! We want to help him, remember?”

 

“He doesn’t want our help,” the Master snapped, shooting again. “Let him wander about with his broken mind if he likes it so much, I don’t c-“ The Master had been so distracted by his angry rant that he hadn’t seen the Doctor dodging his last shot and kicking him in the ribs. And by the sound of it, he had kicked hard. The Master cried out as he rolled over the floor. The Doctor snatched the laser screwdriver from his hands and looked at him with a glare of contempt.

 

“What’s that supposed to mean? ‘Broken mind’?”

 

“The meta-crisis,” Donna spoke up, feeling uncomfortable with the Master clutching his broken ribs and Jack nearly unconscious next to her on the ground. There was no-one left between her and the Doctor with his gun and the laser. She made sure not to look him straight in the eye as she spoke. “A part of your mind kind of ended up in my head. T-that’s why you had to erase my memory remember?”

 

She glanced at his face, just briefly to check what kind of emotion it displayed. And there it was again. This look as if the Doctor had become a completely different person all of a sudden. Warm and full of emotion. “Of course I remember. It was the worst thing I ever had to do, but don’t worry, Donna. There’s a way out.”

 

“What?”

 

“As I said, I am the last _real_ Time Lord left. That makes time mine to form and change. We could go back to that day, prevent you from ever creating this ridiculous clone of mine. You could stay with me. We could travel, forever.”

 

Donna started at him, but before she could answer, Jack cut in, “no you can’t! You can’t go back on your own time line. You’ll create a gigantic paradox. You’ll rip the universe as we know it ap-“

 

The Doctor closed the distance between him and Jack in a flash and struck out. He hit Jack with his gun and Donna jumped away, clapping her hands to her mouth. Jack rolled over the floor as the Doctor spoke: “I can do whatever I want.” The Doctor didn’t raise his voice, but he still went after Jack to hit him again. “The laws of time are mine.”

 

Donna watched shocked as the Doctor beat up Jack. She wanted to go. She wanted to run, all the way back to Chiswick if she had to, just away from here. There was no way this man was the hero Jack saw in him, there was no way this man was her friend!

 

_Donna, you have to stay and fight. Make him see how wrong he is! Please!_

 

 _I can’t_ , she thought. Hot tears running down her cheeks. _I’m not a fighter and I’m not clever enough to trick him or make him change his mind!_

 

_Yes, you are. Just talk to him, he will listen._

_He’ll hurt me!_

_He won’t. I am here. I will stay by your side and not go away, here-_

 

Donna felt an odd sensation spreading all the way down from her head through her body. Like a warm flow that engulfed her from within. Donna didn’t know how the Doctor was doing it, but it gave her a strange feeling of being protected. Suddenly the idea of being hurt seemed secondary. She straightened her back, shaking a little, but her voice was steady. “Leave him alone!”

 

The Doctor looked up, he’d been so lost in the violence that he’d temporarily forgotten all about Donna, but now he gave her this smile again. Donna didn’t let it affect her. “About your offer. I’ll pass. I’d rather die than go anywhere with you. You hurt my friends, how could you think I’d be okay with that?”

 

The warmth left the Doctor’s expression at once. “Oh, so they are your friends, aren’t they? Tell me, Donna, how well do you know any of them? Let me introduce you to Jack, the man who’s risking your life and is using you to go hunting for me. And this is the Master, a lunatic who’s tried to destroy earth and enslave humankind more often than you could imagine. They deserve to be hurt.”

 

“And what about the Doctor?” she asked, making the Doctor raise his eyebrows. “You’re hurting him, what did he do to deserve that?”

 

“I’m not hurt.”

 

“You’re not him. You’re some kind of twisted shadow. The real Doctor will sooner or later wake up and then he’ll feel so guilty for what you’ve made him do.”

 

“I am the real Doctor,” he said. “I haven’t forgotten anything about the man I used to be, I just decided to change. Unlike you. You are farther away from your true self than I could ever be. You are once more insignificant. You’re clueless, scared and weak. Go back to your little unimportant life if you want to, Donna, don’t pretend you understand any of this.”

 

“Arrogant bastard,” Donna said and suddenly found herself looking at the wrong end of Jack’s gun. The Doctor watched her with cold detachment.

 

“I’m warning you. Say that again.”

 

“Arrogant bastard.”

 

This time the Master had spoken. The Doctor whirled around to him, just as the Master pulled himself up with the help of the control panel. He slammed his hand down on a button and the ship lurched violently, sending everyone to the ground.

 

x-x-x-x-x

 

Donna managed to cushion her fall a little with her hands, but she was still disoriented for a moment.

 

 _This is your chance!_ The Doctor’s voice shouted inside her head.

 

She blinked open her eyes and saw that the Doctor had been knocked to the ground as well. The laser screwdriver had rolled all the way to the wall, but his twin, a blue screwdriver, and the gun were lying not too far away.

 

Instinctively, Donna and the Doctor searched each other’s look, trying to read their opponents next move.

 

Simultaneously, Donna and the Doctor moved. They dashed for the weapons between them, came to a stop, and turned on each other. The Doctor was aiming the gun at Donna’s face, she held the screwdriver out in front of her like a torch.

 

“You idiot, you should have gone for the gun!” the Master shouted, but Donna ignored him. An eerie calm had overcome here, she felt as if she wasn’t herself anymore. She was only watching, as surprised by what she was doing as anybody else.

 

“Drop the gun,” she ordered the Doctor.

 

He grinned. “Or what? You don’t know how this thing works and even if you did, it’s not a weapon.”

 

Donna returned his grin which clearly seemed to unnerve him. “Drop the gun. This is your last chance.”

 

The second the Doctor released the gun’s safety, Donna switched on the screwdriver. With an ear-deafening bang, the gun exploded in the Doctor’s hand. He howled and stumbled backwards. “What did you-?!”

 

“Oh, that was easy,” Donna said, tilting her head. “excited the gunpowder particles around the bullet a little and kaboom! No more gun.” Everyone stared at her, but Donna didn’t feel nervous, for some reason she enjoyed the attention, if only her head would stop pounding. “Clever, aren’t I? Oh, yes, very clever.”

 

“Donna?” Jack asked.

 

“What are you?” the Master wanted to know, only the Doctor flexed his hurt hand, but smiled knowingly.

 

“I am the DoctorDonna. Well... right now a little more Doctor than Donna, but someone had to step in, as you’ve stopped being the Doctor a long time ago.”

 

“I see,” the Doctor said. “That’s what you meant with ‘broken mind’. A part of me lives in you. That explains my headaches. And now you’ve overpowered poor little Donna and taken the wheel, eh? That means, if I’m not much mistaken, you’re as good as dead. Your mind is burning up right at this moment.”

 

“Clever boy,” Donna said willing her trembling legs not to give in just yet. Her head felt as if it was filled with burning shards of glass that pumped through her body with ever memory that returned and clicked into place. The part that was still Donna screamed in pain and shock and betrayal, but the piece of the Doctor held her together, absorbing his share of the agony. He just needed to hang in a little longer. Just a little so he could leave Donna’s body and return into his own.

 

“That’s what we came here for,” the DoctorDonna explained, wiping the back of her hand over her clammy forehead. “We just want to give you what rightfully belongs to you. Let us put your mind back together. Save yourself the agony and save my life. What do you think?”

 

“You hope that’s going to stop me. You want the old, cuddly, ineffective Doctor back, but that’s not going to happen. I won’t change my mind just because I get this small part of myself back.”

 

The DoctorDonna put up an effort to move her shoulders up and down. “Then there’s no reason for you to say no, is there?”

 

The Doctor contemplated this. Eventually he said, “you’re going to trick me.”

 

The DoctorDonna nodded, “of course we will. And you will try to trick us. Sounds fair, doesn’t it?”

 

“All right, and how would we go about-“ But he never got to finish the question. The Master seized the opportunity to lunge at the Doctor from behind. He grabbed his shoulders and turned him around so there were standing face to face. Before anyone could stop him, before the Doctor had even understood what was happening, the other Time Lord had pressed his fingers to the Doctor’s temples and brought their foreheads forcefully together.

 

“What?” the DoctorDonna exclaimed.

 

“Master!” Jack shouted, but the Master ignored both of them. For a moment the Doctor struggled against him, trying to get free, to push the Master off, but his movements grew more sluggish by the second, until he hung limply in the Master’s grasp. A satisfied smile spread over the Master’s face and he opened his eyes again, releasing the Doctor who swayed slightly on the spot but otherwise didn’t move.

 

“Who wouldn’t last a day on the battlefield, old friend?” he asked and poked the Doctor’s forehead with his index finger, making him sway more violently.

 

“What did you do?!” Jack asked, pushing himself to his feet. He seemed sore, but managed not to fall over again.

 

“Put him in a- Well, you’d call it a trance, except that it’s not, because he had no way of fighting me,” the Master said quite cheerfully. The DoctorDonna reckoned he was more willing to explain when he could show off.

 

“That wasn’t necessary,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady even though her world was tilting dangerously to one side. “He already agreed to cooperating with us.”

 

“Oh, it was very necessary. Firstly, I can make sure he isn’t attacking us halfway in. Secondly, I couldn’t stand his waffling for a second longer and thirdly, it saves us the time to explain everything to him. Time we don’t have by the look of your face.”

 

Jack frowned and looked at the DoctorDonna just as her legs gave in and she fell to the ground. “Donna!”

 

“Time you just wasted by giving us this speech,” she told the Master, ignoring Jack. “Get on with it!”

 

“Just because the Doctor’s running amok in your head doesn’t mean you can boss me around,” the Master told her, but made his way over to the DoctorDonna anyway, placing his hands on her temples. “Just a warning, this is gonna hurt. Try to hold still and you might survive.”

 

“What?!” the DoctorDonna had hardly gasped the word when she felt him. It didn’t hurt, it was just unpleasant as the Master pushed into her mind. Time Lords might have barriers against this kind of thing, but Donna’s mind was unprepared and so the Master quickly found the wall behind which the Doctor was hidden. Or at least what was left of this wall. He tore it down and seized the part of the Doctor. And then he pulled.

 

To Donna it felt more like someone was ripping a part of her brain out. She scream as the Master pulled the part of the Doctor out of her. She didn’t even manage to form words, she just screamed as her memories came tumbling down, hitting the raw part of her where the Doctor had been sitting. And then they were gone.

 

The Master let go off her and Donna fell sideways onto the hard metal ground, except that she didn’t feel it. All she felt was the agony in her mind. She was dimly aware of Jack shouting at the Master, but what he shouted was beyond her. She couldn’t comprehend the scene in front of her. The Master walked past Jack and entered the Doctor’s mind once more. Different than Donna, the Doctor was in a state of artificial numbness and didn’t feel the pain. A part of Donna found this highly unfair, but that part was quickly swallowed by the darkness that clouded her mind. And then everything was dark and she felt nothing, not even the pain.


	9. The Moment of Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exactly what it says in the title~

Donna woke up and the lack of pain she felt startled her. Had something gone wrong? Had the Master crippled her during the removal of the Doctor from her mind?

 

She slowly sat up. Someone had carried her from the floor of the control room onto a bed in the med bay. She inspected her hands and pinched her arm. Yes, that hurt. Okay, she wasn’t emotionally dead then, good. As for her memories… They were all in place. During her time in America Donna had expected to feel overwhelmed when she got them back, like too much was going on in her mind at once. In reality it just felt as if a thick veil had been lifted from her brain, uncovering this part of her life. How she could ever have forgotten about it seemed absurd now, unreal, it was all just there where it belonged. Donna was almost disapointed about how ordinary it felt.

 

Her memories of the time afterwards, back home with Shaun though... that felt more difficult to understand.

 

She swung her legs off of the bed and froze. Neither Jack nor the Master were in the room with her, but the other bed was occupied and the sight made Donna instinctively clench her hands to fists, ready to fight.

 

The Doctor was lying across the room, watching the ceiling, apparently lost in thought. As soon as Donna realised he was not about to lunge at her right away, she relaxed a little. “Hey,” she said awkwardly. How do you greet your ex-best friend who had just been through a phase of destroying the universe? The Doctor didn’t reply, so Donna continued. “You okay?” Still no reply. Donna pursed her lips. “You’re giving me the silent treatment? Seriously?! _You me_?”

 

She got up and walked over to the Doctor to give her a piece of her mind. She had to get close before she realised how vacant his look was. She tilted her head, watching him as he started ahead, eyes heavy-lidded and unfocused. Suddenly Donna wondered how long she’d been out. Had Jack and the Master left the Doctor in this state all the time? “Spaceman?” she asked more softly. The word rolled oddly familiar over her tongue. She reached out for him, not entirely sure what to do with her hand, so she ended up caressing his cheek. “I missed you, dumbo,” she told him, wondering if he could even hear her. He closed his eyes at her touch as if he was distantly aware of it and Donna smiled, her throat felt oddly tight. “Just for the record, I’m still so cross with you,” she let the Doctor know, tears threatening to well up in her eyes. “Very, very cross. We’ll need to talk about this. About the fact that I won’t-“ She took a deep breath and shook her head, now was not the right time to tell him about the decision she had made. About the last thing she had thought before he had locked her memories away. Soon, but not right now. Instead she said: “I’m glad both of us made it out alive.”

 

Wiping her eyes, Donna left the med bay, looking for Jack or the Master to learn what had happened after she had passed out. She found Jack in the control room, typing an e-mail of sorts. “Hi.”

 

Jack winced, looked up and smiled. “Hey!” he drew Donna in a bear-hug and laughed. “You actually made it! That was amazing!!”

 

“I didn’t do much, that was the Doctor,” she said, feeling slightly dizzy as Jack dropped her back on her feet.

 

“Was he?”

 

“Yeah, he kind of took over...” She didn’t smile. This too was something they would have to discuss. She and the Doctor in private, not with Jack or the Master around. Donna tried to mentally contact the Time Lord, but he was gone for good. Out of her head. It was for the best, but Donna couldn’t deny that she missed his presence.

 

“How are you? Feeling any better? Gave me a real fright when you started screaming and then fainted.”

 

“Me too. But I’m good. No headaches, nothing I hate to admit it, but the Master did a pretty good job,” saying that she glanced over her shoulder, half expecting the other Time Lord to appear out of the darkness. When he didn’t, she asked, “where is he anyway?”

 

“Prison,” Jack said.

 

“What?!”

 

“The TARDIS has a prison of her own. I couldn’t risk letting him wander about by himself, so I locked him up. He’s got a bed and food, he’ll be fine.”

 

“I bet he was pissed.”

 

Jack nodded, “especially after I asked that other favour of him before locking him up. Fella was almost cooperative and then I threw him into prison.” The hint of a smile played about Jack’s lips and Donna decided that, this once, she would swallow the comment that was on her tongue back down. The comment that maybe it would have been cleverer not to burn this particular bridge just yet. Jack was her friend though and he had been through so much to get to this point. Now that Donna remembered the Master she could fully appreciate how desperate Jack must have been to ask him for help. And her, since it meant risking her life and all that. And she decided to let him have this one moment of foolhardy revenge.

 

Instead she asked, “how long was I gone anyway?”

 

Jack glanced at his wristwatch. “3 hours, give or take. And you’re sure you’re okay?”

 

“I’m fine, but I could do with a snack.”

 

“I think I can arrange for that,” Jack winked and they headed for the kitchen.

 

 

It felt off to be sitting in the TARDIS’s kitchen again. It had been such an everyday thing for Donna until it had suddenly been her last meal in here... She couldn’t even remember what she had had the last time she had been in here.

 

Jack made a cup of coffee for himself which he wasn’t drinking and some toast for Donna. She was starving, not dying had left her more hungry than she had expected.

 

“I, uhm, I feel like it’s time for an official apology,” Jack said after a while, breaking the silence. Donna glanced up to see Jack getting to his feet. He stood in front of her, all the Torchwood agent, and said, “Donna, in the past days I’ve risked your life many times. I knew I was bringing you into a situation in which you had no real choice but to agree and come with me. I worked together with a sadistic alien and I manipulated you by using the prospect of you getting your memories back for my own purposes. All I can say is that I’m terribly sorry and, though I know this excuses nothing, I was desperate. Desperate that I couldn’t save Earth without your help and that I could’t save the Doctor without your help.”

 

Donna didn’t know what to say, but Jack’s eyes didn’t waver. He was looking at her as if he expected her to announce a verdict. “Jack, I, err-“ Donna shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know what to say. I’m not really mad at you. Sure, it was dangerous, but it’s not like you didn’t warn me. And I could have hopped off anytime. I- I mean, until I almost died from that piece in my mind, but that wasn’t your fault either.”

 

“But I knew you would never say no to-“

 

“Yes, but that’s not the point,” Donna interrupted him. “Jack- Please sit down, this is just too awkward.” Jack sat, still lookin at Donna with those worried eyes. “Just because you made me an offer you knew I’d accept doesn’t change the fact that you gave me a choice. That’s what counts and that’s why I’m not mad, okay? No need to apologize, but I appreciate it.”

 

Jack nodded slowly. “Okay then… So, we’re good?”

 

Donna nodded somewhat relieved. “We’re good.” And, before getting back to her toast she added, “can we wake up the Doctor?”

Jack hesitated. “... Yes, sure. I wanted to wait for you to come to before I get the Master to do it.”

 

“You don’t sound happy,” Donna noted.

 

“No. Well, this is the moment of truth, isn’t it? Either he is fine or he… isn’t. And we can’t do anything more than we have. Makes you feel kinda helpless.”

 

Donna nodded quietly and took a huge bite of her toast. She thought about all the trouble she and Jack and even the Master had gone through to help the Doctor. How much they had been hurt and how confident the piece of Doctor had sounded in her head during the fight in the TARDIS. Hopeful and willing to fight. And how the Doctor had closed his eyes as if enjoying her touch. “He’ll be fine,” she said firmly. “Let’s get the Master and make sure, okay?”

 

x-x-x-x-x

 

Donna had been right assuming the Master would be less than please about having been locked away. They found him fuming in his cell. “Oh, there they come again. Fantastic. What’s the new plan? Make me save an orphanage and reward me by chopping my arm off?!”

 

“Don’t be so over-dramatic,” Jack replied and pushed back a metal cover next to the wall to reveal a number plate. He started typing in some kind of code. “You did a good enough job, okay? You kept your side of the deal and I won’t forget about mine.”

 

“What did you promise him?” Donna asked, suddenly worried. Having her memories back meant she knew exactly what the Master was capable of if released.

 

“He gets a transfer to a different prison. Said he’s sick of Earth and as long he’s locked away, I don’t care where it is.”

 

“Not only sick of Earth, but sick of you,” the Master growled and Donna could see something beneath the contempt with which he looked at every human. There was an uneasiness in his eyes when he looked at Jack as if someone had run their fingernails over a blackboard. “You’re not supposed to exist. _Immortality_. If you could understand what that means for a Time Lord, you might begin to grasp why the Doctor hates being around you. You’re a freak of nature, an abnormally in time. The sooner I get away from you the better.”

 

Donna avoided looking at Jack. She didn’t need to see him to know those words had stung, because, to some extent, they were true. The Doctor didn’t enjoy Jack’s presence, he had been trying to avoid him ever since he’d been resurrected and knowing how Jack looked at the Doctor... It must be awful, like the person you love has developed an allergic reaction to your presence and all you can do is keep your distance.

 

Jack however didn’t show any of this. He finished typing in the code and his finger hovered over the enter button. “One last thing you need to do. Just wake the Doctor up, nothing else. Then he can drop you off at a prison he sees fit and we’ll never have to see each other again, you understand? No tricks or you’ll be back in Torchwood and in my special care before you can so much as spell ‘abnormaly’.”

 

“Of course,” the Master sneered. When Jack gave the door the order to open, Donna briefly wondered if Jack’s gun really was enough to stand between them and the Master. Was he really that afraid of a fight where the worst outcome for him was a regeneration and the best freedom? But then he stepped out of his cell, shot Jack an icy look and ignored Donna altogether and Donna could only take this as a yes. “Well then, let’s go and wake him up,” the Master said, waiting for Jack to lead the way. “Bet you a tenner that he’s still psycho?”

 

“Shut up,” Jack jabbed him in the back with his gun so they got going. The Master up front, Jack behind him and Donna at his side, she preferred not to turn her back on the other Time Lord.

 

x-x-x-x-x

 

They crowded around the Doctor’s bed in a threesome, the Master sitting on the edge of the bed, bend over, his fingers on the Doctor’s temples and his eyes closed. Jack stood guard with one hand on the gun and the other in his pocekt. Donna stood on the other side of the bed, watching. Whatever the Master did, the Doctor’s eyelids started to flutter and then they closed. He seemed to have fallen asleep. Seemingly endless minutes stretched in which Donna and Jack exchanged nervous looks, but when the Master finally straightened up again, the Doctor stirred. Donna instinctively took a step closer. No matter what had happened, this was her best friend waking up from a dangerous treatment and she needed to know he was okay.

 

The Doctor’s eyes opened and this time they actually seemed to be taking in their surroundings. He turned his head to Donna and smiled a groggy smile. “Hello.”

 

“Hello,” she replied with a voice that sounded unfamiliar to her. She felt a smile appearing on her face, though it was a small one. He was okay. Je was okay and she didn’t care that his first word was hello instead of ‘I’m sorry’, she wouldn’t hit him just yet. Instead she asked: “How... do you feel?”

 

He closed his eyes and when he looked at her again, he was positively beaming. “ _Molto bene_. Feels like I’ve gotten something back I thought were lost forever.”

 

“It wasn’t lost. I took good care of your mind,” Donna replied.

 

“I wasn’t talking about that.” The Doctor’s smile vanished and he reached out, reaching for her hand. “If I had seen another way at that time...”

 

Donna let him take her hand, mainly to reassure herself that he was there and that she could touch him without exploding, but did he expect her just to forgive everything that had happened like that? “Let’s talk about that later,” she replied and squeezed his hand. “Most important thing right now is that you’re back to normal.”

 

“Right,” and as if he had just remembered something he turned around to Jack. “Thanks. If not for you...,” he shook his head, “I don’t want to think about what could have happened.”

 

Donna smiled at Jack, hoping to find a smile on his face as well. And who knew? Maybe he could stay. Maybe, after all he had done for the Doctor, he would be able to ignore what had happened to him, his immortality, and let him stay. But all she found on Jack’s face was a frown. He hadn’t moved, his gun still in hand and he watched the Doctor as the Time Lord added, “let me just get up and I can drop you off at home. I’ll take care of _this_ ,” he nodded towards the Master who was watching him as attentively as Jack “and we can all forget about this.” The Doctor sat up and gave Donna’s hand a little squeeze. “And you can come. We can pretend all this never happened. What do you say?”

 

Donna frowned. Something... was off. If not for Jack’s and the Master’s reaction she might not have noticed it right away, but... “Pretend this never happened? You messed up. Big time. We need to go and fix what you did... you need to make up for your mistakes.” The Doctor’s smile faltered, just a little.

 

“Why don’t you let go of her, Doctor?” Jack asked, brining his gun up until it was trained on the Doctor.

 

Before Donna even realised the Doctor was still holding her hand, he stood up and pulled her closer, forcefully. He spun her around so she was standing with her back pressed against his chest. Her wrist in his left hand, his right arm wrapped around her throat, squeezing ever so slightly. Donna froze. She felt his arm pressing against her wind pipe.

 

“I’ve been told I’m a horrible actor. Charlie Chaplin said so himself,” he said in a chit-chat voice as if he wasn’t about to choke Donna. She used her free hand to claw at his arm, trying to pry him away from her, but she was once again reminded that he wasn’t human and that, no matter her effort, his arm wouldn’t budge.

 

Jack still had his gun trained on the Doctor, but Donna saw the hint of doubt in his eyes. And when she saw it, so did the Doctor. She was standing right between the two of them. The Master was still sitting on the edge of the bed, watching them as if they were a remotely interesting tv show.

 

“Let her go and I won’t hurt you. We’ll just talk,” Jack tried, but even Donna, rapidly running out of oxygen, could hear how feeble his threat was.

 

“Hurt me? How? Without shooting her that is?” The Doctor tightened the grip around Donna’s throat and she felt her head swimming, her lungs were burning for air and she tried desperately to kick the Doctor or stomp on his foot, but he escape her easily. Donna had seen him as a lot of things in her life. A human, an alien, ingenious, thick as a brick wall, good, bad, funny, sad, but never before had she thought about him as a trained soldier. Someone who used to do just what he was doing now to other people.

 

“Let her go!” Jack barked. Donna wanted to shout at him just to shoot, because being shot certainly was less terrifying than being strangled to death. She could already feel her fingers and toes going numb and a blackness closed in around her field of vision. “What do you want?” Jack demanded.

 

“Leave. Get out and never come back. Stay out of things you don’t understand.” His voice was calm. He negotiated and his wager was Donna’s life. She made a last, desperate attempt to wriggle out of his chokehold, but it was useless. If just the piece of the Doctor’s mind was still there, she thought while thinking grew more and more difficult. The poor thing. So afraid to be swallowed up by this madness and now it was... Donna wondered if it might still be fighting when suddenly a voice cut through the mist in her head. “Stop that!”

 

And miraculously the Doctor did just as he was told and his grip softened just enough for Donna to draw in a thin breath. The air burned in her sore throat but she didn’t care. She sucked in the oxygen, gasped, until her body started tingling again.

 

She could see the Master now. Standing up and piercing the Doctor with a glare, but his lips were curled back in a smile. “That’s it. Now release her.”

 

“You don’t actually believe I will fall for your cheap tricks, do you?” the Doctor asked, but Donna thought she could hear doubt resonating in his voice.

 

“Obey your Master!” the Master commanded, “release her.”

 

Slowly, ever so slowly as if fighting the impulse, the Doctor’s arm moved away from Donna’s throat and she managed to pull her wrist out of his grip and get away from him. She stumbled, backed off and stared at him. The Doctor glared daggers at the Master. “What did you do?!” he snapped.

 

“Oh, just took some precautions while I was in there,” the Master said, pointing at the Doctor’s forehead. “Now show us what a good little soldier you are. Attention!”

 

His movements were stiff, as if the Doctor physically struggled against his body, but in the end he stood up straight, his arms down at his side and his legs together. Hatred burning in his eyes as he watched the Master who smirked widely.

 

“Stop it!” Donna wanted to shout, but the words came out as a horse whisper through her burning throat.

 

“How did you do that?” Jack asked.

 

“Hypnosis. Well, not the new-age rubbish you know. Our form. More telepathic, more forceful, less easy to fight, at least if you’re human. Our dear Doctor always made sure to keep me out of his head, until a couple of hours ago, when he kind of didn’t see me coming.”

 

“You knew he would turn on us?” Jack wondered.

 

“... Sure. And I thought it might be fun, wanna see what else I can make him do?”

 

“No,” both Jack and Donna said. Jack was clearly disturbed by what the Master had done, but Donna also saw relief on his face. She wasn’t sure what she felt... Sore. She rubbed her neck, very sore and shocked. But it was a physical kind of shock, her heart was going crazy in her chest and she felt adrenaline flooding her body, making her want to run, but emotionally...

 

She looked at the Doctor, frozen into position and glaring at all of them. Mad, in every possible sense. This wasn’t her best friend anymore. Her best friend had stopped existing after she had touched that damn jar with that hand inside all this time ago. Afterwards there had only seen betrayal and lies and now this violence.

 

“We’ll lock him up and... think of something,” Jack decided, giving Donna a sideways glance. She nodded, not taking her eyes off of the Doctor’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, can’t believe this story is already 9 chapters long and more is sure to come :o For those of you who like the classic structure of texts, chapter 8 has been the end of Act I, so here we go with Act II of Mayday.


End file.
